Suspending Realism

[Jinx]

What things in the series did you not buy into? What parts did you have to force yourself to suspend realism and accept as fiction?

For me it's definitely the Gunblade. Not just that it'd work, but that anyone would ever want to use it.

Also Cloud's giant sword.

And Barret's gunarm.

And that anyone would hire high school students to carry out assassinations.

[TreasonWall]

Not to nitpick, but they're not in high school in spite of the way they all act. They're college graduates. I really didn't understand the Gunblade until I found the Ultimania explanation while browsing the internet. And even then it's a bit far-fetched. Surely there are many weapons that are a lot simpler to produce while also being more efficient?

Also for both FF7 and FF8, the ability of the characters to survive hundreds of bullets to the face during battle sequences. Well, if they survive Blizzaga then why not bullets I suppose.

[Jinx]

I guess it depends on where you're from as what constitutes as high school and college. But they're only 17/18, which is pretty dang ridiculous. Here in the States, that's high school.

Agreed about bullets hitting them. HOW DID CLOUD SURVIVE THAT FALL. I'm not buying into Aeris' explanation that the flowers broke his fall. xD

[NeoCracker]

Fuck the Gunblade. I'm fine with Lightnings, as it just transforms, but Squalls is fucking stupid and nonsensical, and there isn't even a reason for it to be so nonsensical.

And I watch a lot of anime, I have no trouble buying high schoolers assassinating people. :p

[Flaming Ice]

Terrorist Cid surviving his bomb attack.

[Raistlin]

HOW DID CLOUD SURVIVE THAT FALL. I'm not buying into Aeris' explanation that the flowers broke his fall. xD

Yeah, that fall was crazy, but Cloud did also survive getting run through, after all. Those JENOVA cells must be something.

[Gamblet]

Terrorist Cid surviving his bomb attack.

That.

Also, the way Vincent transforms is weird. No broken clothes, just BOOM! and he is a Frankenstein.

[dandy da oak]

HOW DID CLOUD SURVIVE THAT FALL. I'm not buying into Aeris' explanation that the flowers broke his fall. xD

People have fallen from heights and survived. Not intact, of course, but not dead or dying either. If you're unconscious, your body ragdolls better and absorbs the impact or something?

The gunblade makes perfect sense. A small explosion causes the blade to vibrate at a frequency that helps rend flesh. I don't understand the confusion :confusion: The fact that Barret has an arm that can fire a gun is arguably more confusing.

[NeoCracker]

HOW DID CLOUD SURVIVE THAT FALL. I'm not buying into Aeris' explanation that the flowers broke his fall. xD

People have fallen from heights and survived. Not intact, of course, but not dead or dying either. If you're unconscious, your body ragdolls better and absorbs the impact or something?

The gunblade makes perfect sense. A small explosion causes the blade to vibrate at a frequency that helps rend flesh. I don't understand the confusion :confusion: The fact that Barret has an arm that can fire a gun is arguably more confusing.

The fact that it's a smurfing blade ductaped onto a pistol grip. The design of the blade actually makes it less efficient to swing then a normal sword and would only put excessive strain on your wrist, making it horrible for prolonged fighting, and less efficient overall.

The explosions shaking the blade is just an excessively complex way to say it's a vibrating sword, in addition shooting a smurfer would be a better use of a bullet then causing the a blade to vibrate. This makes the weapon unnecessarily costly considering it has less practical combat use then just shooting the smurfer. Also, the bullet thing could be done without the atrocious design.


So, to review, it's less efficient then a sword, needlessly costly, bad to use for extended periods, and it looks smurfing stupid. Yet it's the signature weapon of a mercenary group.

[Karifean]

How is it the signature weapon of a mercenary group when Cid whispers to Squall "You're the first SeeD with a gunblade"?

[Dr. rydrum2112]

Ages: Just add 10 to every character in Japanese games and you get closer to reality.

[Makoeyes]

Honestly there were a ton of things, unless the weapons are made with magic.

BOTH Gunblades, Squall's and Lightning's. A sword cannot be combined with a real gun. That's an impossible weapon. And how did it not break whenever she blocked Odin's gigantic Zanteksuken?

But all of this could be said of the majority of the weapons in the later games.

The ages of SOME of the characters is really unrealistic. How is Eiko so competent and independent even though she's 6? Maybe she's a child prodigy? But even that wouldn't explain her emotional maturity? Even if a kid is working for NASA at age 12 (which HAS happened), they just can't deal with death like that at age 6. It's not possible.

As for how Cloud survived that fall? They're superhuman, you know. Same goes for why Squall survived Edea's Ice Strike, that and healing powers. Most of this can be explained when you take into account that they're superhuman.

[NeoCracker]

I actually buy lightnings Gunblade, because it transforms between the two. It's never both at once.

And I can buy a young child being able to handle death, especially considering how early it happened, and how much. It's a bit of a stretch, but within the realms of my suspension of disbelief. :p (Not that I like Eiko, mind you).

And eh, I recall the Gunblade being a SeeD signature, though it's not really relevent one way or the other. :p

[TreasonWall]

The fact that Barret has an arm that can fire a gun is arguably more confusing.

IIRC, he needs his other hand to fire with it.

[Pike]

"WHY DIDN'T THEY USE A PHOENIX DOWN WHEN [insert character death here]" is really the only thing that bugs me about FF "realism". I'll easily buy into the fantasy of the rest.

[Freya]

hahah yeah the phoenix down thing too.

Really clouds super large sword, like whaaaat?

[Dr. rydrum2112]

One of the things that annoy me is the "capture factor & escape" that happens in EVERY FF. For example it bothered me in FFX was when you surrender to some soldiers because they are pointing guns at you- when you were and will be whooping them in battle... at least use some consistency!

[Makoeyes]

I always thought why they never used phoenix downs was because party members who fall in battle are "only mostly dead" instead of dead-dead.


I actually buy lightnings Gunblade, because it transforms between the two. It's never both at once.

And I can buy a young child being able to handle death, especially considering how early it happened, and how much. It's a bit of a stretch, but within the realms of my suspension of disbelief. :p (Not that I like Eiko, mind you).

And eh, I recall the Gunblade being a SeeD signature, though it's not really relevent one way or the other. :p
The fact that it transforms though would make it rather flimsy. A collapsible weapon would not be able to block a giant sword like that. Again, if they said they were enchanted, or made with some kind of super-metal, then it would make sense. Kingdom Hearts never actually pushed my suspension of disbelief because magic is coming out the wazoo in that series.

I actually liked Eiko. I know people found her annoying, but she never bothered me. Another unrealistic thing about Eiko is that at one point, if you leave all the magic users behind at Kuja's palace when you go to Oeilvert, she actually leads the party, despite being a six-year-old girl.

[Laddy]

"WHY DIDN'T THEY USE A PHOENIX DOWN WHEN [insert character death here]" is really the only thing that bugs me about FF "realism". I'll easily buy into the fantasy of the rest.
They're not dead; they're unconscious, Pike. :colbert:

Clearly a tuft of bird feathers can wake you from being hit with a meteor, but get stabbed by a sword that's maybe a few inches wide? You don't go back from that, even with bird feathers. :colbert:

Duh.

[NeoCracker]

I always thought why they never used phoenix downs was because party members who fall in battle are "only mostly dead" instead of dead-dead.


I actually buy lightnings Gunblade, because it transforms between the two. It's never both at once.

And I can buy a young child being able to handle death, especially considering how early it happened, and how much. It's a bit of a stretch, but within the realms of my suspension of disbelief. :p (Not that I like Eiko, mind you).

And eh, I recall the Gunblade being a SeeD signature, though it's not really relevent one way or the other. :p
The fact that it transforms though would make it rather flimsy. A collapsible weapon would not be able to block a giant sword like that. Again, if they said they were enchanted, or made with some kind of super-metal, then it would make sense. Kingdom Hearts never actually pushed my suspension of disbelief because magic is coming out the wazoo in that series.

I actually liked Eiko. I know people found her annoying, but she never bothered me. Another unrealistic thing about Eiko is that at one point, if you leave all the magic users behind at Kuja's palace when you go to Oeilvert, she actually leads the party, despite being a six-year-old girl.

It may have been all the years of transformers growing up, but changing and retaining functionality is well within my ability to buy it. :p

And yeah, they are not dead, they are KO'd, or Knocked out. Basically it revives in the same sense that Smelling Salts would. ;P

[Skyblade]

I always thought why they never used phoenix downs was because party members who fall in battle are "only mostly dead" instead of dead-dead.

"Your friend here is only mostly dead. There's a difference between mostly dead, and all dead. All dead, there's only one thing you can do."

"What's that?"

"Go through their pockets and look for spare change."


And yeah, they are not dead, they are KO'd, or Knocked out. Basically it revives in the same sense that Smelling Salts would. ;P

They even work the same way. You wave them under the affected person's nose. Only it's not the smell, it's the tickling that gets to them.

[Gamblet]

And yeah, they are not dead, they are KO'd, or Knocked out. Basically it revives in the same sense that Smelling Salts would. ;P

They even work the same way. You wave them under the affected person's nose. Only it's not the smell, it's the tickling that gets to them.

Cocaine.

[Makoeyes]

I always thought why they never used phoenix downs was because party members who fall in battle are "only mostly dead" instead of dead-dead.


I actually buy lightnings Gunblade, because it transforms between the two. It's never both at once.

And I can buy a young child being able to handle death, especially considering how early it happened, and how much. It's a bit of a stretch, but within the realms of my suspension of disbelief. :p (Not that I like Eiko, mind you).

And eh, I recall the Gunblade being a SeeD signature, though it's not really relevent one way or the other. :p
The fact that it transforms though would make it rather flimsy. A collapsible weapon would not be able to block a giant sword like that. Again, if they said they were enchanted, or made with some kind of super-metal, then it would make sense. Kingdom Hearts never actually pushed my suspension of disbelief because magic is coming out the wazoo in that series.

I actually liked Eiko. I know people found her annoying, but she never bothered me. Another unrealistic thing about Eiko is that at one point, if you leave all the magic users behind at Kuja's palace when you go to Oeilvert, she actually leads the party, despite being a six-year-old girl.

It may have been all the years of transformers growing up, but changing and retaining functionality is well within my ability to buy it. :p

And yeah, they are not dead, they are KO'd, or Knocked out. Basically it revives in the same sense that Smelling Salts would. ;P
With Transformers, it makes sense to me. I'm not well-versed in Tr. lore, but based on what I know the Cube basically has borderline magical powers, giving life to machines. So it makes sense that their transformations don't entirely follow the same rules. With FF though I don't think there's ever an explanation for the weapons. With my fanfiction that I'll probably never write, it was explained that the weapons are inherently magical, because they have bits of Magicite in them. They're also made of a super-metal that was lost to mankind until recently. But I don't think we ever get an explanation in the games.

I'm pretty sure that at one point in one of the games, the protagonists actually try to use PDs to bring back a dead character in a cutscene, which didn't work because they're dead-dead and not KO'd.

[Fynn]

While I absolutely adore every last one of its incarnations, the job system makes no fucking sense. You can't just go around and say "I wanna be a black mage now!" and suddenly be one. At least they all make sense in their own universes... Except for Tactics. There is no justification for it there.

[Gamblet]

While I absolutely adore every last one of its incarnations, the job system makes no smurfing sense. You can't just go around and say "I wanna be a black mage now!" and suddenly be one. At least they all make sense in their own universes... Except for Tactics. There is no justification for it there.

Maybe in Tactics they put on a chunk of armor and train their skills. The Job selection screen might be just a shorter version.

[Wolf Kanno]

I started to write a list and realized I was seriously picking on a few titles in particular that would cause a pointless argument when fans came to defend it so I will simply say this. While every FF has at least a few elements that seriously breaks the suspension of belief, FFIV, FFVII, and FFX probably have the most for me personally. I honestly feel you can only accept the story and characters if you never stop to think about them. There is just too much bullshit going on in these games that undermine everything.

[Greatermaximus]

In real life it could take any known variable length of time to recover from something. It's the fact there's a 'number' on everything. Why does a ether heal 150mp. Why not 157.2654?

Like why is a circle 360 degrees? A number has to be chosen when in reality if something happened to you, you might not know what unlike in a game.

[NeoCracker]

Also, to add to the gunblade Lighting uses, go to a local Toys'R'Us and look at the Lego section. There are the sets that are used to make two very different items that are functional using the same pieces. :p

[Greatermaximus]

The obvious standard story arc. Intro, rising actions, climax, falling action, daneumau(sp). Everyone becomes over the top when the world is ending plot. That's always good though. :)

[Fynn]

In real life it could take any known variable length of time to recover from something. It's the fact there's a 'number' on everything. Why does a ether heal 150mp. Why not 157.2654?

Like why is a circle 360 degrees? A number has to be chosen when in reality if something happened to you, you might not know what unlike in a game.

I always figured the characters don't know that either, the numbers are just for us players.

[Greatermaximus]

Lets ask what's in common? A specific number of characters/texts that are alloucated a set amount of words? A.K.A the hero/ine can be brought back to life X times and still win? Same with villian and many other characters? All because you're expected to believe it.