I have taken very detailed notes here at the beginning because I think the beginning should be heavily scrutinised. I think all of it should, really, but the beginning particularly so. I will not be doing anything quite this drastic, and if Alayna does indeed assist me, then I will be able to type and go rather than playing for an hour and typing for five hundred. If I could grow a beard, it would be grey right now.


The Otherworld song and this cinematic are cool. Really, remarkably cool. It characterises Tidus really well. It shows how calm and in his element he is prior to the Blitzball game. Despite the discrepancies out in the field, where blitz is concerned, Tidus is king and he has all the confidence in the world. He is a professional athlete. It shows how fanatical people are about Blitzball, and how much of a spectacle it is.

It sets a great tone; the music is harsh (although not as crisp as it is in the original) and metal(lic), as compared to the gentle, natural feel of the music in Besaid and so on, showing a clear difference between the technologic and technophobic. Panning out over Zanarkand gives us a better view of the city and it is, once again, gorgeous.

Blitzball is shown to be extremely athletic. It is also shown to have loads of dreadlocks, and Tidus potentially kills another athlete by ramming him out of the stadium. Worth noting is the presence of both men and women on both teams; Blitzball is not a sexist sport and that is very interesting. I may muse more on that later, actually.

Side note: Auron is also cool. Really, really cool. Why do they make him so cool? I guess it establishes his character as being a little impressive and mysterious, but a lot of this cut scene confused me for a long time and still does even after understanding it. (SPOILER)I get that Auron "rode" Sin but how is he "calling" it? He raises his little canteen as if to signal him, and it seems really misleading. Sin knows what to do and if not should not be able to understand Auron at all.

The shattering of the statue was really cool. It's not just showing that Sin breaks stuff, it's that it completely shatters and then absorbs every part of people. Visually impressive too.

Tidus, mid-Sphere Shot (does he know this move straight away in Luca? If no, ludonarrative dissonance maybe, if yes, genius), sees Sin firing lasers (?) and manages to bail as everything crumbles around him. Uh, if he was performing the Sphere Shot, he would've had to fall somewhere. Back in, right? But if so, why is there something for him to grab? He'd smash his face on that. Anyway, he grabs hold of the ledge and we watch the stadium sink, and then he drops what has to be at least a good 50m and dies. Game over, thanks for coming.

No, of course not. Plot armour. The ludicrous nature of blitzball can be explained with some kind of jedi mind trick and a mention about water and anti gravity tech. Falling from that height onto stone or marble or concrete cannot. These minor points are a big gripe for me throughout the series, and throughout stuff generally. I get that they couldn't add in incremental ledges while maintaining the integrity of the FMV, but really now.

Tidus escapes, along with all the other invincible people, and bumps into Auron. "Oh hey, what are you doing here?" like it's only mildly a big deal. I fault Square Enix and James Arnold Taylor equally for the poor lines in this game. I don't hate Tidus, and I don't hate his voice acting, but there are a lot of really really trout lines in this game.

Tidus runs along the stupid single highway, in the opposite direction to most people, and sees the Bahamut Kid. This... is really weird. He walks up like he's going to say "hey kid, whatcha doing out here?" but it is entirely out of character; Tidus has just been wandering around looking dazed and confused, and he sees one stoic looking kid in a hood and is like "oh yeah I'm the star player of the Zanarkand Abes I should be calm."

At this point, I made another note complaining about the loading screens. Yes, this is a great point me from a little while ago. This game is remastered. Surely it does not need insufferably long (like 5-10 seconds) load screens. They're already gross; why make me look at them often!?

Tidus finds Auron again and Auron points at Sin. Sin appears to be in the direction that the other people were running. Um? I don't know if it is me or if it was Square Enix, but I am suddenly disoriented and that is an unpleasant feeling.

We find some Sinscales and... well, Auron lets Tidus swat at them for a moment. Why, I don't know. Why the Sinscales don't tear him a new one, I don't know. Then Auron pulls a sword out of his ass and hands it to Tidus, who struggles under its weight. No. Tidus is a professional athlete. Look at the muscle tone in his arms. Even if Blitzball had no arm actions, he would still be strong enough to wield that trout with two hands. Maybe he's shaken, fine, whatever. But then he breathes a little and can hold it with one hand, with theoretically no prior sword training? Bulltrout, Square Enix. This is a hero-of-destiny type trope and you should be ashamed. Here was your chance to create a true hero out of his element and they didn't take it.

The combat is nice. The dings as you move onto commands and select them are new, but nice. Numbers are crisp, and I can dig that. All of the interface is neat and not very invasive or obtrusive, without blending in. I'm a huge fan of the battle system anyway, but I've mused on that elsewhere.

There's another brief section where Tidus says "Let's get out of here" to Auron as if it was a new idea and he just thought of it and wasn't freaking out about the crazy trout and the fighting and the dying and the fact that there is only one road in his city that leads where he needs to go always.

Then they blow up a building to deal with a bunch of enemies. Then Auron tells Tidus to jump on the falling building and he does so like it is no Big Deal. Then they use the building, which is randomly exploding for no good reason, as a ramp to jump elsewhere.

Auron does his talk and I didn't make notes here but I will say that they are vitally important in understanding the way Tidus acts later. Auron is the coolest dude ever, and also a psuedo mentor to Tidus. Auron tells self-absorbed superstar Tidus that this is his story; of course Tidus takes that on board, subconsciously or otherwise, and is a bit of a brat about stuff.

Then we get a white loading screen and I love it. This is nice. Let's have this all the time.

Then we get existential bulltrout. This detracts from the pacing so smurfing much. The next time we control Tidus should not be in a weird but familiar place; it should be in a completely unknown place to really capture the feeling of confusion. It's also stupid because Tidus swims like he is treading water despite being submerged in ~spirits~ or whatever the hell is going on here.

Okay now we're at the Sunken Temple and I've stopped playing for now so THERE