Quote Originally Posted by Forsaken Lover View Post
Your FFX hate is showing. >>

People probably fear death in Spira for the same reason they fear death in real life; it's human. It doesn't matter if you know, or think you know, there's Heaven after you die. You still don't want to die.

And thinking about it more unselfishly, I'm sure the possibility of starting a family and then having your kids killed by the giant unstoppable monster is a source of great fear.

Honestly Spira as of FFX is the most depressing and grim place to be in any FF game short of the World of Ruin.
Like I was going to miss a chance to slam the game?

In all seriousness though, I can't really buy into this.You have an incredibly well documented idea of how the afterlife works (and for the sake of not complicating this any further, we won't mention X-2 and how it basically says the Farplane is like the Lifestream) the worst case scenario is you turn into a monster and even then, you just get killed again and either become a new fiend or finally pass on.

The problem with fearing death in X is that Spira's been doing it for 1000 years and culturally, I can't buy into them not being jaded by this point, especially since the afterlife is physically happening around you. Your animalistic need to survive still justifies a sense of fear but we've got people moping around as though death in the world of Spira is becoming non-existent. Seriously, the afterlife sounds more interesting than actually being alive in this world, where I huddle in a small building praying someone else will die for me so I don't have to, when in reality, death in that world is actually the true freedom.

Despite utterly hating Seymour, I hate to admit he's the only character in the world who actually makes any sense. The culture of Spira still acts like Sin is a new phenomena but really? After a thousand years of putting up with this stuff, you would think the culture would have been far more emotionally disconnected and have a rich philosophy around the perfection of death as opposed to staying in fear of it.

I can't say a world really sucks to live in when the consequences of death are hardly bad. You know what's going to happen, you've already seen the afterlife and know its a pretty snazzy place, you can still interact with the world and if your will is strong enough you can actually continue on with your life as though nothing has happened. Where is the bad deal here?

The only reason VII and IX are ranked lower despite also having definitive afterlife's is because a big part of the plot involves the bad guys screwing with the afterlife. Being undead, turning into a monster until you get killed and sent, or even going to Farplane does not sound as bad to me as being brutally killed and then getting screwed out of the cycle of reincarnation cause one company wants to use your soul to power the lights on at a strip club and the other world has your souls being ejected out of the planet to make room for alien souls and has you also turned into a mutagen power source that is more bane than good.

To me, dying in the X world is the least of your problems in that game. The whole afterlife system really took the drama out of the whole Sin deal for me cause dying was not a bad thing in X. To be fair, I am an individual who doesn't really fear dying as I feel there are worst fates that can happen to you.