If mods permit, we will use this thread to discuss plot points and the ending to the game. I was thinking of a thread with unmarked spoilers, but someone who does not wish to be spoiled can always accidentally click their way into this thread. For the time being, let's stick to spoiler tagging our posts in here.
Additionally, perhaps it may help to structure our sentences and spoiler tagging placements in a particular way. Posts that have no visible context apart from a spoiler tag like this:
You ever seen the movie "The Thing"? I don't mean the Fantastic Four Thing, I mean the shapeshifting alien one from the 1982 film. That's a good film. Maybe the FFXIII games should end like how it ended in that film. Most people dead. Stuck in Antarctica. No idea which one left is even human.
can be about ANYTHING to do with the plot. How would anyone know which part it is referring to unless they reveal the spoiler content? It may be a spoiler about a particular part of the game that they have yet to reach or see. So rather than doing that, something like this would be more considerate and appropriate:
"So in the second area of the game...
That dude character gets fellated by a Chocobo. I think that's a glitch, but it could also be a plot point. I dunno. Can't tell.
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So, for anyone who has already seen or read up on the ending of the game (Lightning Returns AND Xenoblade spoilers ahoy):
Bunnybelts is defeated after Lightning fights her in space. Fighting a God in space. Just like Xenoblade. I thought his crystallising body was hurled into the sun, but it looks like he is just lying down dead somewhere in the dark, while Caius confronts Noel. Didn't get what that was about, and why, but as the main characters depart to use the power of the crystals to create a new world, Caius hands Yeul to Noel. We see the Solar System. Then we see Earth.
Lightning gets off a train. Flanders poppies. French signs. Probably France. If not, Flanders, Belgium, but everyone knows that Flanders is full of WW1 bomb craters. She's actually dressed like a normal person, and steps out to gaze at a beautiful French countryside on a cheery afternoon, preparing to attend Snow's and Serah's wedding. And for some reason, we don't see what has become of everyone else. I suppose the CGI budget ran out there, so the later Ultimania book will probably be covering that instead of actually showing it in the game. But oh well. Toriyama had to end with a smiling Lightning there, to utterly and unambiguously let us know that she is happy, even though adjusting to such a radically different world can't be easy. And once again, like Xenoblade.
I repeat. The game ends...in a random part of France. Seriously.
Overall, it's a very anime-like ending. At least it is sort of coherent with the whole theme of sticking it to the Gods and forging one's own fate, even though that is such a massively-abused trope and plot point in Japanese storytelling now. We all at this point had to expect a final, conclusive happy ending for everyone, this time without having two of the main characters stuck in crystal somewhere. That being said, it's still dumb. I called Xenoblade out on its "beat-up-God-and-forge-a-new-world" plot point, and I will also call out Lightning Returns for doing this. It sounds ridiculous to imagine all of this from the very beginning of the Hanging Edge up to Lightning in an idyllic rural region of our world's France or wherever, but there you go. Maybe if Toriyama and Watanabe didn't explicitly make the new world Earth, and kept it ambiguous enough like Xenoblade (which from I understand, is just a new world and not necessarily the old real Earth that Zanza destroyed), I'll find it a wee bit more palatable, but then again, I've never personally held out on any hope for this game's storyline and storytelling anyway. It was always about the gameplay and the explorable world.
Well, when I say "Earth", I mean our planet with a messed-up Europe geographically:
And some screens from the last sequence:
Lightning gets off a train. Flanders poppies. French signs. Probably France. If not, Flanders, Belgium, but everyone knows that Flanders is full of WW1 bomb craters. She's actually dressed like a normal person, and steps out to gaze at a beautiful French countryside on a cheery afternoon, preparing to attend Snow's and Serah's wedding. And for some reason, we don't see what has become of everyone else. I suppose the CGI budget ran out there, so the later Ultimania book will probably be covering that instead of actually showing it in the game. But oh well. Toriyama had to end with a smiling Lightning there, to utterly and unambiguously let us know that she is happy, even though adjusting to such a radically different world can't be easy. And once again, like Xenoblade.
I repeat. The game ends...in a random part of France. Seriously.
Overall, it's a very anime-like ending. At least it is sort of coherent with the whole theme of sticking it to the Gods and forging one's own fate, even though that is such a massively-abused trope and plot point in Japanese storytelling now. We all at this point had to expect a final, conclusive happy ending for everyone, this time without having two of the main characters stuck in crystal somewhere. That being said, it's still dumb. I called Xenoblade out on its "beat-up-God-and-forge-a-new-world" plot point, and I will also call out Lightning Returns for doing this. It sounds ridiculous to imagine all of this from the very beginning of the Hanging Edge up to Lightning in an idyllic rural region of our world's France or wherever, but there you go. Maybe if Toriyama and Watanabe didn't explicitly make the new world Earth, and kept it ambiguous enough like Xenoblade (which from I understand, is just a new world and not necessarily the old real Earth that Zanza destroyed), I'll find it a wee bit more palatable, but then again, I've never personally held out on any hope for this game's storyline and storytelling anyway. It was always about the gameplay and the explorable world.
Well, when I say "Earth", I mean our planet with a messed-up Europe geographically:
And some screens from the last sequence:
Square sure is on something strange lately 
Then again, I don't care for the plot or the game 
Strongly considering cancelling my preorder and waiting until it's £15 or less. I won't be able to play it much until the summer anyway. 
