Besaid

Upon waking up off the shore of Besaid, Tidus finds a Blitzball belonging to the Aurochs. This is a neat way to tie Tidus to an area; he might be entirely foreign to this place, but there is something, an important element of his past that he can cling to, and something innocuous which subtly progresses the plot.The water is beautiful. Australians are constantly bombarded with images of beautiful beaches, but Besaid truly looks like a tropical paradise. Those are the kinds of shores you would be happy to drown in.

Building on the running animation discussion from earlier, Tidus and his swimming motion are pretty solid. He's not going out there like an Olympic champion, but neither is he sloppy as hell. Tidus swims like a Blitzballer who doesn't quite know how long he'll be in the water or how far he has to go, but is happy to go at a leisurely, sustainable pace. I find this to be incredibly helpful in maintaining verisimilitude. Of course, them wearing clothes undermines that quite considerably. Their outfits are not aquadynamic at all.

Worth noting is the discrepancy in skin tones between in-game and cut scene. Wakka seems considerably more tanned in both than he appeared in the original, though my memory of this may be slightly off. But even with the touch ups, the FMVs are still running on a dull palette and so most of the characters seem far more tanned than they do while running around using the game engine. Surprisingly, it's probably the cut scenes that best represent what skin tone these people should have. For the most part, they live tropical lives. Both Yuna and Lulu seem entirely out of place with pale-white skin tones, whereas Wakka fits that pseudo Polynesian box well. Late game spoilerEven Auron seems more tanned and he's smurfing dead.

Many people complain about Wakka's voice acting. I'm sure it's annoying for some people. As someone who lives in a region where his archetype can be commonly found, I think John DiMaggio did a decent job of it. Like every character and every voice actor in this game, though, a lot of lines are delivered strangely, but I think Wakka cops an unfair rap for his dialect and accent.

Something which I haven't mentioned too much yet is music. My musical knowledge is fairly limited, so I try to avoid criticising it unless it is obviously bad, or praising it unless it is used effectively and is subtle enough that some people might miss it but not so subtle that I miss it Regardless, I want to praise the audio team for their work. When Tidus mentions that he plays for the Zanarkand Abes, the incredibly uplifting Besaid jam fades into total silence, accentuating how out of place his words are.

A telling sign of Final Fantasy X's age is that the mouth animations are by and large terrible. Frequently the mouth isn't even moving when dialogue is being spoken, or vice versa. Obviously this would be a huge undertaking to fix, but as it stands I am yet to find a worthwhile reason to have re-released this. Insofar as a 2001 game, though, Final Fantasy X is a decent enough first foray into the realms of voice acting for the series.

There are some problems which can be attributed to audio mess ups or simply character stupidity: Wakka knocks Tidus into the water and then dives in after him. When Tidus surfaces and looks around, he asks "What's the big idea?" knowing full well that Wakka is underwater and cannot hear him. Unless Blitzballers are able to speak and hear underwater. Can they do that?