Lightning Returns [SPOILERS] Lightning Returns: Ending

[Clairfarron21]

I don't know about you guys, but I'm a bit disappointed with the ending of Lightning Returns. I mean, yes it was nice and all, and we see Lightning's doing okay. But what about the others? The epilogue just shows Lightning's new life in the new world and that's it? What about the others?

The way the ending as made, it kind of made me think they might do a movie out of FFXIII, like they did with VII. Ha, I'll be darned if they did.

 

[Razberry Knight]

I don't know about you guys, but I'm a bit disappointed with the ending of Lightning Returns. I mean, yes it was nice and all, and we see Lightning's doing okay. But what about the others? The epilogue just shows Lightning's new life in the new world and that's it? What about the others?

The way the ending as made, it kind of made me think they might do a movie out of FFXIII, like they did with VII. Ha, I'll be darned if they did.

The rest of the people are sent to this world, but only few have memories. a new novel will be released with a reporter trying to find out about this old world they once lived.

Personally though, the way its designed, it still feels like a cop-out. A lot of things don't make sense. characters from different times all living in the same timeline. and really, it just ruins any balance the series had (or what little it had).

A lot of people found it to be disappointing.

 

[Clairfarron21]

The rest of the people are sent to this world, but only few have memories. a new novel will be released with a reporter trying to find out about this old world they once lived.

Personally though, the way its designed, it still feels like a cop-out. A lot of things don't make sense. characters from different times all living in the same timeline. and really, it just ruins any balance the series had (or what little it had).

A lot of people found it to be disappointing.

Well, it's good to hear they've made it.

I do wish the secret ending would have shown more to the ending. Like it could have at least shown the whole gang together you know? What Lightning said in the ending, makes me think that there might be another sequel. Nothing like that novel you mentioned, like maybe a movie or something. I don't know.

 

[Razberry Knight]

the problem i have is what the ending is more than how it ended. even if we saw the whole gang togetger, does it feel like thats how it "should" be.


look at where ff13 and 13-2 are driving at. both hadsacrifice as part of their plot. Vanille and Fang sacrificed themselves in the first game. although that becomes undone, serah sacrifices herself in 13-2. But the ending we got was more about making Lightning happy over putting things right.

as a story in general it breaks all the rules of what ending a story should have. you know how in Breaking Dawn we have Jacob who imprinted on Bellas egg just so he can have a happy ending. happy yes, but gross and wrong? definitely yes.

 

[Sheechiibii]

the problem i have is what the ending is more than how it ended. even if we saw the whole gang togetger, does it feel like thats how it "should" be.

look at where ff13 and 13-2 are driving at. both hadsacrifice as part of their plot. Vanille and Fang sacrificed themselves in the first game. although that becomes undone, serah sacrifices herself in 13-2. But the ending we got was more about making Lightning happy over putting things right.

as a story in general it breaks all the rules of what ending a story should have. you know how in Breaking Dawn we have Jacob who imprinted on Bellas egg just so he can have a happy ending. happy yes, but gross and wrong? definitely yes.

I also didn't like the end of LR. It just seems like the whole storyline goes out the window. I don't mind them ending up in another world (that definitely seems to be ours) but not getting closure on the other characters? That bothers me, but it's not like I wasn't already bothered by the entire plot anyway since it just seemed like a giant cop-out. I don't think Vanille and Fang or Serah 'sacrificed' themselves though. It's not like they chose to die to save the world, Vanille and Fang had no other option left other than to be tortured over and over. Serah didn't even know she'd die. Not exactly sacrificial.

And lets not bash other stories here, kind of off-topic

 

[Razberry Knight]

I also didn't like the end of LR. It just seems like the whole storyline goes out the window. I don't mind them ending up in another world (that definitely seems to be ours) but not getting closure on the other characters? That bothers me, but it's not like I wasn't already bothered by the entire plot anyway since it just seemed like a giant cop-out. I don't think Vanille and Fang or Serah 'sacrificed' themselves though. It's not like they chose to die to save the world, Vanille and Fang had no other option left other than to be tortured over and over. Serah didn't even know she'd die. Not exactly sacrificial.

And lets not bash other stories here, kind of off-topic

Lightning Return's ending and whether it sucks or not is weight by what the other games provided.

If you play 13, you know its a sacrifice that both Vanille and Fang accepted, and even then, its not an completely horrible ending. its not like they were left with no closure. But they come back and for a reason. Their sacrifice was more giving up their human form.

In 13-2, it was implied that Serah knew what was going to happen and chose to continue. so i would say that it was a done-sacrifice.

But even when the game was a complete cop-out, i expected to "not like" Lightning returns, but for some reason the series just keeps giving me a reason to HATE it with a passion. I expected an ending that was adequate or at least not stupid.

 

[Shaissa]

To me this ending was kinda to finally get the final "happy ending" for Lightning. Do you know everything about everyone? No, but then again in a lot of FF endings you get left with questions. Not saying that this was the best way to do it, but at least for Lightning, she got her sister, happy, her friends are alive and not crystal anymore, all her friends have what they want to be happy. And they get to start fresh in this new world.

Kinda like X-2, where X was about sacrifice and death, X-2 was basically about getting Yuna happy again. I feel that is what Lightning Returns does to Lightning.

 

[Razberry Knight]

To me this ending was kinda to finally get the final "happy ending" for Lightning. Do you know everything about everyone? No, but then again in a lot of FF endings you get left with questions. Not saying that this was the best way to do it, but at least for Lightning, she got her sister, happy, her friends are alive and not crystal anymore, all her friends have what they want to be happy. And they get to start fresh in this new world.

Kinda like X-2, where X was about sacrifice and death, X-2 was basically about getting Yuna happy again. I feel that is what Lightning Returns does to Lightning.

i know why they did it, but should have they made Lightning happy? The problem is she should've been happy with 13's ending. But in this one she's having her cake and eating it too.

Again my Breaking Dawn comparison where Jacob ends up with someone, but who is it? a half-human, half-vampire which some how speeds up the growth rather than slowing it down and then suddenly stops aging. So Jacob is still technically becoming a pedophile.

To me Lightning is Jacob, and the story is the half human. Its not whether if it would've been done better, but whether it should have been done at all. Lightning's ending got everything she could possibly wanted, and Lightning Returns was designed in such a way.

The entire game was a distraction and an excuse. a distraction from the lack of triple-A games, and an excuse to give Lightning a happier ending. But i don't believe Lightning should've had that type of ending at all. with everything that's happened so far in 13 and 13-2. Plus it makes virtually no sense to bring back Serah...its like she hasn't grown at all. She devolved even more.

 

[Sheechiibii]

i know why they did it, but should have they made Lightning happy? The problem is she should've been happy with 13's ending. But in this one she's having her cake and eating it too.

Again my Breaking Dawn comparison where Jacob ends up with someone, but who is it? a half-human, half-vampire which some how speeds up the growth rather than slowing it down and then suddenly stops aging. So Jacob is still technically becoming a pedophile.

To me Lightning is Jacob, and the story is the half human. Its not whether if it would've been done better, but whether it should have been done at all. Lightning's ending got everything she could possibly wanted, and Lightning Returns was designed in such a way.

The entire game was a distraction and an excuse. a distraction from the lack of triple-A games, and an excuse to give Lightning a happier ending. But i don't believe Lightning should've had that type of ending at all. with everything that's happened so far in 13 and 13-2. Plus it makes virtually no sense to bring back Serah...its like she hasn't grown at all. She devolved even more.

Jacob is not becoming a paedophile because he is not attracted in any way to a baby or child. His imprinting on Renesmee was foreshadowed as far back as the second book in the series when imprinting was first explained, it's an entirely different matter to LR where everything has been pretty much tacked on at the end so that it's all happy. There was no planning for LR as far back as the original XIII game, it feels like with each game they just invented an entirely new and unrelated plot.

 

[Linnaete]

I remember someone (Toriyama?) stating that the ending was originally planned to feature everyone, but because FFXIII began with Lightning, they ended with Lightning.

...even though technically, FFXIII began with Vanille's voice. If that doesn't count, Sazh was just as prominent on the train as Lightning.

Let's not also forget that Lightning was never primus inter pares in the first game. Despite constant assertions that the franchise has never had a female protagonist until Lightning, there was a surprising...lack of anything that made Lightning stand out anymore than her fellow L'Cie compatriots. Once her epiphany came, she slunk into the midground along with everyone else. If anything, Vanille stood out for being the central catalyst who did most of the legwork in catalysing the entire chain of events.

Unplanned trilogy, and a general obsession with trying to spin Lightning into something greater than she ought to have been, or a character more popular than she actually was in reality to be as ubiquitous as she became. That's the gist of the reasoning with the ending only focusing on Lightning. There's not much I wish to say about the rest of the ending either. When your story had long entered the recesses of silliness before the final closure of the trilogy, hey, why not go with an anime-like outlandish ending?

As someone who knows little to nothing about Twilight, reading that Jacob imprints on a baby as a future mate is still fucking creepy, no matter how early it was foreshadowed. Not sure what relevance it has in this discussion though, but it's probably because I only skimmed this thread.

 

[Paddy McGee]

Gotta love Paedo Werewolves!!!


Anyway, I haven't played LR yet(don't intend to, unless someone wants to pay me to do it) but, I can understand why the game might have a Lightning ending- while this is the end of the series, the person who didn't exactly get an ending at the end of XIII was, well, Lightning(and Hope, I guess) so the ending of LR is just showing that Lightning- too- finally got her dues. Snow/Serah are getting married, Sazh finds Dajh, Hope's dad is still alive(I think?), Fang and Vanille get to go out in style. Lightning doesn't really seem to get anything other than a self-satisfied anime-level dramatic pose.

Or something like that.

The focus on Lightning in the XIII sequels obviously had significant influence on the ending of LR. It does make sense to focus on her when she's the only(?) playable character in this particular game.

All this is a hypothesis that I thought up when I saw the Twilight reference and I wanted to post "Paedo werewolves!!!". Gotta stay on Topic, y'know?

TL;DR: Most of the party had their happy endings in XIII- they can return to them- Lightning finally gets her happy ending, hence the focus on her?

 

[Razberry Knight]

Actuallly Lightning did get her ending in XIII, but they milked the series to saying "oh wait. did she get her ending?" which it has always been saving Serah. in XIII-2 it tries to make it as if she was looking for a way to save Vanille and Fang from their current crystal state (according to the novel) and thats how she was led into the invisible world with Etro, but then again in Lightning Returns it goes back to all about Serah.

This time the happy ending is for everyone in the cheesiest, half-baked way possible. and really, did it need to? I can understand Snow coming back, maybe Hope for the way the ending was brought, Noel, Kain and Yuel are also good additions as they are from the future and this takes place around that time, but everyone else was not even necessary. We didn't need to see Fang, we didn't need Vanille, we especially didn't need Sahz.


The idea of being transported into this new world is also bad, they got rid of the old world just for the sake of having that ending saying "oh look, it takes place on earth. FF fans, eat it up!". Why even make it take place in the future at all? Really, the cheesiest happy ending to ever come out in final fantasy, and this is when playing FF:Mystic Quest.

 

[Sheechiibii]

Just got finished and I actually liked it more than I thought I would. I liked Lightning more in this game than I did in the first (since we barely saw her in the second I'm not really counting that one). I liked Hope's role and I really liked the concept of Lumina. I guessed that she was the emotional part of Lightning's soul around the time they started hinting that Lightning needed to find that piece of herself to beat Buni.

Around the time it came out there was heaps of talk about it being very much like the Christianity lore. I didn't get that impression at the time and after playing it I'm even more baffled by why so many people chose to twist it that way. Which I'm glad of really because I would have probably enjoyed it less if it had reflected Christianity.

I did like that they made the religious more dangerous and the evil ones again though. It took me back to FFX with the Yevon zealots and I liked that reminder, because seeing people do evil in the name of ficticious religions in games feels like a good way to present how terrible it is that people do that in reality too. It feels like it should be unrealistic but we know it's not and it has a good effect of making me hate these characters even more.

As far as the gameplay goes...I can't complain abou the time constraints. I rushed through each day doing as much as I possibly could because I was concious of the time and then...I had everything done by day 6 and had to sleep till day 12 to make up the time and even then still had time to finish all the board quests on the very last day. If I'd known I had that much time to do everything I would have probably played it in a much more relaxed way and probably wouldn't have used chronostatis quite so heavily. I liked the battle style and was very glad the roles changed so quickly unlike XIII where switching paradigms took far longer than it could have. But yeah, all in all I enjoyed the game

 

[Razberry Knight]

i don't doubt its a game of its own, but coming from actually playing halfway through and the other half just going through the motions, what i also found was a lack of progression in the game. Feels like LR is EXACTLY like The Third Birthday, decent gameplay and has its difficulty if you strive for it, but overall, the story is what lacking. Again, it can be entertaining but only if you ignore your better judgement.

Personally, i can like a character i originally hated if they at least develop their personality over time. I didn't see that in Lightning in this game, she's just kind of there and her personality shows she cares more than she did in FF13-2. I actually detest the concept of Lumina...i dont know what makes her even possible, but if one thinks carefully she's just a plot device. What could potentially teach Lightning something has to be something Lighting kept to herself. honestly, this type of development should've existed in the original 13 without the use of a pseudo character such as Lumina. creating lumina is adding the development that should've happened.

I would've liked Hope's role...if it wasn't so much on the side until near the end...but then again, it also lines up with all the billions of anomalies Lightning Returns brings up that despite having an answer, don't provide any satisfaction of really getting a real legitimate reason. Hope was a character designed for greatness and yet, he's one of the weaker characters in the game.

 

[Sheechiibii]

i don't doubt its a game of its own, but coming from actually playing halfway through and the other half just going through the motions, what i also found was a lack of progression in the game. Feels like LR is EXACTLY like The Third Birthday, decent gameplay and has its difficulty if you strive for it, but overall, the story is what lacking. Again, it can be entertaining but only if you ignore your better judgement.

Personally, i can like a character i originally hated if they at least develop their personality over time. I didn't see that in Lightning in this game, she's just kind of there and her personality shows she cares more than she did in FF13-2. I actually detest the concept of Lumina...i dont know what makes her even possible, but if one thinks carefully she's just a plot device. What could potentially teach Lightning something has to be something Lighting kept to herself. honestly, this type of development should've existed in the original 13 without the use of a pseudo character such as Lumina. creating lumina is adding the development that should've happened.

I would've liked Hope's role...if it wasn't so much on the side until near the end...but then again, it also lines up with all the billions of anomalies Lightning Returns brings up that despite having an answer, don't provide any satisfaction of really getting a real legitimate reason. Hope was a character designed for greatness and yet, he's one of the weaker characters in the game.

It wasn't so much that I liked Lightning for her development overall. I didn't like her much at all in XIII and I feel like in LR she's an entirely different character and it doesn't feel like she's developed that way naturally. However, I prefer the character she is in LR so I enjoyed her more, even though I know it's badly written when you take into consideration the whole series. I didn't see Lumina as a way for Lightning's character to develop really, I saw Lumina as the part of Lightning's character that she's been rejecting because of the weakness. I saw her more as a plot twist rather than character development. We were quite obviously supposed to think she was Serah, so finding out that she was the missing piece of Lightning's soul just made things more interesting.

I did hate that they made Hope a kid again. I was never satisfied with the explanation given for it - which was basically just 'God wanted him that way'. Why? What possible reason was there for God to want Hope to be a child? Making him a child changed nothing in the plot and only served to annoy me. But other than that I still loved his character, he has always been one of the characters I like more in the XIII series though, along with Noel who I wanted to see more of in LR if I'm honest. LR made me like Snow a little more too, and I'd always hated him. For the first time I actually felt like he might deserve Serah and love her, whereas before I'd always thought he kind of treated her like the damsel he was entitled to for being such a 'hero'.

 

[Ed Elric]

I think just overall the game, in my opinion, was a disappointment.

My boyfriend had bought it for me and I felt like the only reason I played it was to pass time and have something to do.

I hated Lightning throughout the whole series of the games... but I do have to say the ending was oddly, refreshing. Don't get me wrong, the entire game i loathed... but I was happy for Lightning.

 

[Sunowo]

I don't know about you guys, but I'm a bit disappointed with the ending of Lightning Returns. I mean, yes it was nice and all, and we see Lightning's doing okay. But what about the others? The epilogue just shows Lightning's new life in the new world and that's it? What about the others?

The way the ending as made, it kind of made me think they might do a movie out of FFXIII, like they did with VII. Ha, I'll be darned if they did.

The others are on the world, but Lightning haven't found them yet, but still she is sure she will. Quoting herself: "I only know... That soon we will be together."

And yes the "new world" is the Earth. It is obvious for any spanish person as Spain is the very country shown when the planet zooms