The whole concept of Fal'Cie makes no sense [Full game spoilers]

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Originally Posted by VeloZer0

It doesn't seem obvious that Fal'Cie can't kill other Fal'Cie at all. They just can't go against their own function (which included their continued function). If they made a Fal'Cie that had the function of killing Orphan, well...

Also, why wouldn't you take humans that actually had a desire or predisposition to destroy Coccon in the first place? I could understand if they were in a rush, but they had literally hundreds of years to plan this out. Why would they act if they weren't in a rush?
The plan with the cavalry sounds like a half baked way to get them back to Coccon, indicative that their plan was completely falling apart. Of course anyone should have realized that it was completely obvious that is what would happen if you took a bunch of random people and told them to destroy the world.

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You know, except for the fact that after a centry or two one didn't think 'Hey, why don't I stab Orphan myself, gee that would save a lot of time'.

If the Fal'Cie were able to kill other Fal'cie there really wouldn't be a story without some drastic changes to the current plot.

And perhaps they just didn't have the chance to get someone who wanted Cacoon destroyed? It didn't seem as if they could just go around to whoever they wanted. They kind of had to pick their La'ciel on a circumstantial basis.

That was part of the Fal'Cie lore as far as I understood it. They couldn't just change what they were doing. I can buy that they can't kill themselves because it would go against their nature. How they can't physically do anything contrary too their function, but can dream up and force grand schemes on humans is a little sketchy but it was stated in game so I can deal.

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If the Fal'Cie were able to kill other Fal'cie there really wouldn't be a story without some drastic changes to the current plot.

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That was my point, there was no real plot going on. Underneath there was no real feasible reason for these things happening.

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And perhaps they just didn't have the chance to get someone who wanted Cacoon destroyed? It didn't seem as if they could just go around to whoever they wanted. They kind of had to pick their La'ciel on a circumstantial basis.

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They kind of had the entire Cocoon under their complete control. There is no way they couldn't have picked exactly who they wanted. Though you are right that they could not have physically gotten the l'Cie themselves, remember they have the entire army at their beck and call to go round people up for them.

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Originally Posted by VeloZer0

Just beat the game last night, and asside from all my other gripes with the ending one thing really stood out to me.

As I understand these are the facts that we know from the game (or have to assume are true):

- Fal'Cie were created by the 'Maker'
Source: Dysley
- Fal'Cie can only do what what they are created to do
Source: Dysley and Orphan
- Fal'Cie can have desires outside of what they are created to do
Source: Orphan wanting to die even though he can't kill himself, Fal'Cie wanting the Maker back even though the Maker didn't make them to bring 'him' back
- Fal'Cie can't change when they are made to do
Source: Orphan
- Coccoon did not exist when the Maker left
Source: Dysley
- Fal'Cie build cocoon
Source: Dysley, common knowledge

Since Fal'Cie can't change their purpose and there were obviously no Cocoon building and running Fal'Cie around back then (since the idea of Cocoon didn't even exist) the only way it could have possibly been created was by making new Fal'Cie with purposes involving the construction and running of Cocoon.
To summarize: Logically Fal'Cie must be able to create other Fal'Cie with purposes different than their own.

Now:
WHY THE HELL DIDN'T THEY JUST MAKE A FAL'CIE TO KILL ORPHAN?!?!
That just strikes me as a million times more logical.

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Your conclusion is erroneous about what must occur for cocoon to exist, that or too linear in thought, and I will explain why:

As you established:

Fal'cie are created by the maker, and have a function that they were created to perform and cannot go against this task. They are slaves to their own 'focus,' much like a l'cie has to fulfill it's focus.

Fal'cie have free thought.

Cocoon didn't exist when the Maker left.

So, why is the conclusion false? Because it assumes that Fal'cie are given explicit instructions on every exact detail on how to do the job they can't go against. For example, a Fal'cie is given the task to create food for humans. It absolutely has to make food, but there is no demand as to -how- it has to make food. It could grow wheat one year and rice the next, but as long as it's still providing food, it's still performing it's job.

So in essence, cocoon's existance is very much possible by the collaberation of Fal'cie - all it takes is one Fal'cie having the 'focus' to protect humanity (which I -think- you could describe Orphan's focus as) and deciding that it would be better to do it by creating a shell for them to live in from the wilderness. The fact that Fal'cie have free will makes collaberation possible and makes the creation of a place like Cocoon possible - without the necessity of a Fal'cie being specifically created to 'create' cocoon. Additionally, given that Fal'cie have consciousness they then therefore have the ability to learn and adapt to do their job better and more efficiently - 'hey it's easier to protect and provide for mankind if they're in a 'cocoon' than if they're out in the Pulse wilderness!'

That really isn't a plot /story / mythos hole.

Barthandaleus is the perfect proof of Fal'cie not being forced to do their job in one specific way, so long as they do their job, and don't do something directly contradictory to their job.

Though I have no direct quote atm, it was stated that Coccon was created exclusively for the purpose of being destroyed in a sacrifice. There was no intention of helping humans at all.

An interesting line of though with the latitude of a Fal'Cie's ability to act. You bring about the thought that they should be able to perform any action that is not in contradiction to their 'focus' (I will use the term focus from here on, lacking a better term to describe it. Obviously this is a different concept from the focus of a l'Cie). As such any Fal'Cie should be able to aid in the construction of Cocoon so long as they are not contradicting the focus given by the makers.

However, this doesn't explain the existence of Fal'Cie such as Orphan. From what you have said I gather there are two possibilities:
a) he has a focus to power Cocoon (my interpretation)
b) he has a focus to help humanity in a more general sense and choses to power Coccon

However, in Case B Orphan should then have the ability to withdraw power from Cocoon, as it is not an essential and core component of his focus. Withdrawing power would be in direct violation of Case A, and therefore impossible if we were to assume this model.
One could argue that allowing Cocoon to plummet would be too close to a violation to whatever his generic focus was, but torturing Fang into killing him is just as close. Both are not direct violations of this 'focus', but both end with the immediate loss of power to Coccon.

Barthandaleus states his focus is to oversee the Fal'Cie of Cocoon. Letting one of those Fal'Cie die and cease to be able to preform their function is in direct contradiction to this focus. The only explanation I see is that the ultimate purpose of all of the Fal'Cie on Cocoon was to die in the sacrifice.

Interesting response. I hope to hear more from you. :)

Orphans only stated 'Focus' was to provide Eden with Power, and honestly we don't even have the slightest clue as to what Eden's 'focus' is. So there really isn't an issue at all with Orphan's Focus so much as an Issue with Eden's focus.

Honestly, it's freakishly vague about the purposes of all three of those Fal'cie.

That's the real issue with this story. It's not that there are plot holes, it's that it's so freakishly vague in this regard they don't even give you the chance to find one. :p

I think a key point is that this story isn't entirely about Barthandulus or the past, it's about the viewpoint of the characters involved. We see very little of what goes on when the characters are not around, and I believe that is intentional. If they wanted to tell us everything about the world, it would be in the form of an Encyclopedia. No matter how many questions you may come up with, there will always be more questions once those are answered. Such is the way of the history of worlds, especially when it is not accurately documented by historians who have inevitably been swayed by the interference of corrupt fal'Cie. This is the story of the characters, not the history behind the world. Every FF has similar stuff here and there throughout the stories so far as I can see that leave you asking questions.

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Originally Posted by VeloZer0

WHY THE HELL DIDN'T THEY JUST MAKE A FAL'CIE TO KILL ORPHAN?!?!

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They don't have the power to create other fal'Cie. At least, I've never seen any evidence of such a thing happening. To my understanding, the fal'Cie that moved to Cocoon already had similar purposes. It's not so much "help Cocoon" as "create food" or "create light" etc. Hell, there could be some that simply had a purpose of hospitality, and pretty much everything about Cocoon is effectively hospitality. Barthandulus himself is an architect, not a creator or destroyer. With this in mind, he could only put things into motion, 'suggest' things, offer illusions that fit his design so that it will progress to his intentions. However, that can itself be a good or bad thing. You can, of course, be the architecture of destruction.

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Originally Posted by VeloZer0

And if you think about it, what is to stop all the Fal'Cie on Pulse from just deciding to just start again with another Coccon?

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What's to stop the Germans from recreating the Nazi army? Technically, not a lot. But a distinct lack of an evil dictator who wants to destroy the world probably has something to do with it. I don't believe the Pulse fal'Cie have any intention of recreating Cocoon - all the fal'Cie that wished to side with Barthandulus went to Cocoon and the others shook a fist or two at them whilst staying on Pulse. That would explain why everyone on Pulse thought that Cocoon was evil - why would they unless the Pulse fal'Cie were telling them such things?

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Originally Posted by VeloZer0

The Fal'Cie had hundreds of years to think up a way to kill themselves, and the best they can come up with is to give a bunch of humans special powers and hope they do it? Seriously?

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The 'Maker' designed them so that they could not kill themselves. It's not unreasonable. Maybe some of them have a purpose of not being able to destroy things. Time can't always change design.

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Originally Posted by VeloZer0

Also, why wouldn't you take humans that actually had a desire or predisposition to destroy Coccon in the first place? I could understand if they were in a rush, but they had literally hundreds of years to plan this out. Why would they act if they weren't in a rush?

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They needed Pulse l'Cie, not Sanctum l'Cie. They couldn't be picky with who they got, and they had to find a way to get them to Cocoon in the first place. It may well be that they did not plan this from the start and that they only made the plans once they found that the Pulse l'Cie had managed to destroy the Pulse fal'Cie. It may have been only at that point when they considered such possibilities as we have no evidence that l'Cie had killed fal'Cie before without becoming Ragnarok.

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Originally Posted by VeloZer0

They kind of contradict themselves there. They say they see people as only tools, but they also say they admire people's abilities to make their own choices. Just one more reason I can't bring myself to buy the Fal'Cie.

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I would say the better word is 'envied' the people's ability to make their own choices. They used them as tools - most people did what was asked of them out of fear of becoming a Cie'th. It's no different to a mob leader using a gangster. The gangster is capable of making his own choice, but he still does what he is told - he is a tool. However, in the case of the fal'Cie, the tool is doing something they simply could not do on their own, regardless of consequence. They just couldn't. Mankind can't drill holes with their hands, so they use tools to do this. We can't kill people from distance, so we make tools to do this. The only difference with fal'Cie/l'Cie is the exact reason that the fal'Cie also envy the l'Cie - the fal'Cie are not capable of doing whatever they want by limitation of their grand design by the Maker.

As for purpose etc...
Some provide energy.
some provide life support.
Some provide ecology.
Some provide transportation.
Some provide routes.
Some provide creation/design.
None provide death. It is entirely plausable (and given what is said, would make sense) that the fal'Cie were simply designed by the Maker to say "you will not take the life of a fal'Cie, be it by your own hands or by a mechanical tool or beast." He could have even said "by any means at all" but there would always be the loophole in that humans can do whatever the hell they please.

There's a LOT which isn't answered in this game (I guess they're leaving the door open for a sequel). For instance just what *is* this maker, and are the fal'Cie actually alive or are they just Terminator style AI gone wrong... I mean they do look kind of metallic and manufactured. Maybe the "maker" was actually just humans in the first place, thousands of years ago, and the war of the machines is long forgotten.

I guess it'll be answered in 7 years or so when FFXIII: Advent Crystarium is released :p

I had a better reply typed out, but it logged me off since I went to watch a movie in the middle of it, so it's lost to the annal's of the internet.

The maker is just the god figure in the world. There really isn't anything known about it other than the fal'Cie were created by it, and the fal'Cie remember it. The fal'Cie then in turn created humans if I remember right.

But in essence it comes down to this: fal'Cie are inherently prevented from doing any direct action against their 'focus.' So any action they -do- perform isn't directly against their 'focus' by nature of them having performed the action.

If I absolutely cannot do A, but I do B, which may look like A to outsiders, then even though it looks like A it must not be A, because I absolutely cannot do A, and it must therefore be B.

So while fal'Cie were created with the purpose of killing Orphan - and Orphan wanted to die, Orphan still couldn't just lay there and let the sword kill him - Orphan still had to fight to the maximum of it's ability.

There's an interesting plot analysis here:
Final Fantasy 13 Backstory Summary ver 0.2 (SPOILERS) - Final Fantasy XIII Message Board for PlayStation 3 - GameFAQs

Its accuracy is in question, but it's the most sense I've seen of it so far (still lots of questions though)

One thing I'm wondering is what happens to everyone after it all... sure they saved the world, kind of, but only through the quick thinking of Fang and Vanille. The rest of them had knowingly sent Cocoon plunging to its doom - as has been said, it seems that they'd decided to risk the whole world and millions of people based purely on the belief that they can change things, and got lucky.

Makes you wonder how many people must be after their blood. If you consider how angry and murderous Hope went at the beginning of the game over the death of his mother when Snow was trying to fight for a good cause, and multiply that by the number of deaths that must've occurred when the contents of Cocoon got scrambled like an egg... I don't think they'll necessarily see them as heroes. At the very least it'd take a lot of time and convincing before the people would understand and believe the truth about the fal'Cie. Still, I guess this is getting mildly OT.

Not to mention everyone in the world already hated them before they even took out Orphan. The whole knocking Coccon out of the sky is sure to smooth things over though :) Or that they are essentially in the middle of nowhere in Pulse, miles away from Cocoon with no apparent way to get back up and in even if the wanted to.

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At the very least it'd take a lot of time and convincing before the people would understand and believe the truth about the fal'Cie.

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"Pulse l'Cie are totally not evil and out to destroy your world and way of life. The fact they we just did is simply a funny coincidence."

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The maker is just the god figure in the world. There really isn't anything known about it other than the fal'Cie were created by it, and the fal'Cie remember it. The fal'Cie then in turn created humans if I remember right.

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I seem to remember it being said that the Maker created Fal'Cie and humans, though I could be wrong. Truth be told I am only assuming the maker exists at all in the first place because we have scant other evidence to go on. With the track record of JRPGs it wouldn't even be close to a surprise if it was all just another false religion.

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There's a LOT which isn't answered in this game (I guess they're leaving the door open for a sequel).

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You are much more optimistic than I am :p

Loony, I'll get to you when I have more time. :)

The Maker did indeed make the humans as well as the fal'Cie. The fal'Cie merely found a way to create l'Cie from humans.

"You'll get to me in time" - oo-er, that sounds ominous! I do hope at least that some of your questions are being answered in ways that you can accept.

EDIT: And I totally agree that they'll be high on the Most Wanted lists of a few people. I imagine that upon finding out that Pulse isn't at total war with them that things will pick up, but that would take some time considering how powerful the monsters in that area are. I'd be more interested in the Pulse fal'Cie's actions, as they never much liked Cocoon's fal'Cie. Will they be accepting of the Cocoon human group? Will they turn them, too, into l'Cie to the point that they are driven to extinction?

I'm too lazy to read all of the posts so forgive me if this has already been said, but the way I see it the fal'Cie could have made Cocoon because, from what I understand, the Cocoon fal'Cie were created to help nurture humans. If that's their basic function then building Cocoon to make it easier would not be out of the question. Also, it's a good way to get what they want done too. They want the Maker back so they found a loophole to do what they were made to do and to bring him back. Then there's just the small problem of finding a way to finish their plan.

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Originally Posted by Loony BoB

EDIT: And I totally agree that they'll be high on the Most Wanted lists of a few people. I imagine that upon finding out that Pulse isn't at total war with them that things will pick up, but that would take some time considering how powerful the monsters in that area are. I'd be more interested in the Pulse fal'Cie's actions, as they never much liked Cocoon's fal'Cie. Will they be accepting of the Cocoon human group? Will they turn them, too, into l'Cie to the point that they are driven to extinction?

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Do we know that is where the population of Pulse went? Where does that information come from? I was always curious, but the game seemed to offer no answers.
I don't necessarily know that Pulse Fal'Cie have specific dislike for Cocoon Fal'Cie either. I mean, sending people to destroy Cocoon is exactly what they want, so it almost sounds like they are in cahoots.

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"You'll get to me in time" - oo-er, that sounds ominous! I do hope at least that some of your questions are being answered in ways that you can accept.

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Nothing sinister, I just saw your post and it looked like it was long and covered many points. In my experience it usually takes a half hour to respond to something like that, which I haven't had to dedicate to a single post the in last few days :) I just don't like to see someone who put that much effort into writing something ignored.

Reading the Analects would answer these questions about Cocoon's construction quite handily. It's stated in them that Lindzei, another god-like being on par with the Maker(but evil, apparently), created not only Cocoon, but the fal'Cie that run it, and then left just like the Maker did. No plot-holes, not contradictions, at least not on that particular point.

I haven't read the Analects, so this is kind of coming out of my ass, but why would the Fal'Cie of Cocoon want to summon the Maker if they were Lindzei's 'children' in the first place? Seems to me that just kicks the plot whole to the other side of the room instead of closing it. Like I said, I haven't read them, so the answer to this may be in there as well. When I get back from work. ;)