The story of Ultima explained | Final Fantasy 16 Lore
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- Опубліковано 6 вер 2023
- In this episode we see the character of Ultima deconstructed, and look at what makes the villain work in the context of Final Fantasy 16's story - along with some of the flaws in its thematic delivery.
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In this Final Fantasy 16 lore discussion we consider:
- Clive and Ultima
- Ultima in relation to the world of Valisthea
- Ultima and the Eikons
- FF16 Ultima design as opposed to earlier iterations of 'Ultima' as a concept
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- Alleyway Jack
#FinalFantasy #FinalFantasyXVI #Ultima - Ігри
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I’ll begin with saying thank you for the video.
There aren’t many videos about the lore of this game, especially about Ultima. I also enjoyed him a lot despite him being slightly different from the standard main villains in previous Final Fantasy entries.
Ultima has been written to be a perfect representation of the Demiurge in Old Testament and Gnostic books. And it probably is the best ever at doing that in a videogame, and one of the best ever in general.
Not only his background story, mannerism, behaviour and its attempt at hiding imperfection/similarities with humans do a perfect job in conveying that, but also its design. From the alien features of its standard body, reminding of an eldritch horror, to its Ifrit version that takes heavy inspiration from both, previous entry, especially the Ultima boss in FF6, and then the figure of the “Lion faced serpentine deity” of Bernand De Mountfaucon.
And at last the almost biblical but still very outwordly look of Ultimalius. Also, his very name meaning Final, mirroring the Exodus in which the God of the old testament declares himself “the Destroyer”. And in fact Ultima has a line: “I created you, all of you. And what is mine, is mine to destroy.”
Edit: forgot to mention, Ultima also appears with a different design has a boss in the stage previous to origin. And the look they went for there is straight-forward the Devil.
Regarding the last dialogue between Clive and Ultima - I think the usage of words like Logos was necessary.
The game has lots of gnostic symbolism and I’m pretty tempted to say the whole plot is a well done attempt to represent the battle Christ VS The Demiurge. It wouldn’t be the first time FF uses words borrowed from esoteric traditions, as games like FF7 even has its main villaim called Sephiroth (Tree of Life in Kabbalah). The terminology has been intentionally added at the very end to make sure people would realise the connection and do the research.
To be fair, it’s only when I played the game for the second time that I fully realised how well the story is done when you understand what the writer was trying to convey and what were their main inspirations. Although, yeah maybe they could have used a better to introduce such terminology earlier and give us more context. Improve the delivery. They do hint at the bible and stuff but mostly it happens in item descriptions (like the swords/loot that you get from eikonic fight and now also Kairos Gate)
Sorry if I wrote such a long comment, just wanted to share my thoughts on it.
His eyes have that Uncanny Valley characteristic. Such an errie but elegant villain.
Definitely. His eyes are the most unsettling thing about the design. Everything else looks fairly human. But his eyes are very alien.
Yeah I loved the eyes, I think it shows how much we rely on the eyes to feel something is relatable and human... same as how Disney characters are often animals but we relate to them through their human features/expressions. As the other reply suggests, a lot of Ultima's design is human but the eyes just make it completely alien.
It took me a second playthrough to realize it was Ultima who took Joshua's form as the hooded man in some of his appearances. You can tell it's Ultima whenever he smiles a very uncharacteristically menacing smile as the Hooded Man.
i loved how scary he looked...and i loved how connected he was to all of it! great villain!
I think Ultima ultimatley (pun intended ;P) didn't work as a villain, is because when he's revealed as not actually being a God, just an alien a la Jenova from FFVII, he still keeps the act up. He still throws himself with words like "penance", "absolution", etc. Something i understood that he used when talking to his believers, like Barnabas etc.
But like... Once he revealed to Clive and Joshua that he came from another world that died because of their overuse of magic, he never drops the act of playing God. Sure, he claims to have created humanity, but we don't actually _know_ if that is true, it could be bullshit, the Fallen could have been humans that were just exterminated by Ultima when he arrived on Valisthea and just left a handful alive after planting the seeds of "Mythos" in their gene pool. Or he did create Humanity, and when he mentioned how humanity "woke" up while he was asleep, that could have been the technologically advanced "Fallen" ones, whom he decided to destroy, due to them being to advanced for his taste.
Still, Harry Lloyd is a joy to listen too.
Ultima created Humanity to create Clive (Mythos). It's not an emotional connection to the hero but that goes with the theme of Ultima being so unhuman and alien. It was all for Clive, or Mythos to be fair because I'm sure Ultima didnt care about who the vessel was just as long as they were a vessel.
Hence why he never calls him by his birth name just his given name from ultima
Ultima is a very Japanese sci-fi villain. I've seen many sci-fi anime going back decades with a villain with similar motives. It further deepens the subtle Japanese-ness of the game, despite the claims which the haters throw at it for being a "western game".
And I loved how there was never an attempt to turn him (it?) into a sympathetic villain. Many times jrpgs (and a lot of Japanese pop culture) tries way too hard to make you feel sorry for a villain. Sometimes it works, and sometimes I just want the hero to shoot the bad guy and get it over with. Ultima is this unsettling, cold, emotionless creature who sees humans as nothing but his pawns. He doesn't have a tragic backstory. He's not filled with regret or sadness over a lost love. Nope, he just wants to destroy humanity and the world to get what he wants.
resonant arc have talked about how in the east an antagonist can reach a redemption or catharsis, but in the west they have to die.
@@Windraesa I don't hate the concept of villain redemption. I just think Japanese pop culture does it too much and not very well in many instances.
When it is done badly, it tends to be the one-scene face turn and all's forgiven. It works better when there is some kind of penance involved, not just the character realizing they are the bad guy and everyone being okay with it.
Just watching this while waiting for my cuz's son to come pk^ her heathens aka daughters , he comes in and says who's alleyway jack when I say wtf you don't know he says he hasn't played 9 , 11 , or 14 because their basically online only . IK ff11 wasn't just online but you didn't get much without the online part that's when I told him 9 wasn't online and he can get on ps store and I think it's available on steam
To me he is Sephiroth from FF7 who became a god after numerous attempts and wanders through other worlds after eons.
I liked Ultima as a concept, but something about him didn't vibe with me. He would come onscreen and I would roll my eyes, knowing another long, condescending spiel was on the way. I didn't find him especially intimidating or compelling to actually watch.
I think the Ultima moment that struck me the most was toward the end, when it was revealed that his main motivation was self-preservation. It was interesting to me that he was so detached and far removed from everything that he couldn't see his own hypocrisy --- that he chided humanity and looked down on them for wanting the same thing he did --- to survive.
Other than that though, I thought he was a solid plot driver that served his purpose, but I didn't particularly like sitting through cutscenes with him.
For me, the main thing that made Ultima not land as well as he could (like you, i like the concept of him) was that the moment it was revealed that he actually wasn't "God", just an alien creature from another planet, who destroyed their own world due to their use of magic, he still kept the act up, throwing around terms like "salvation", "absolution" etc.
It would have been better for him to change tone after that point.
@@MukationHis act felt forced. It wasn't convincing to me that he was deluded and believed what he said. What did the narrative designers do to tell us why Ultima is so conceited? Is he conceited because he created humanity as tools, so he thinks he's better than them? Then why is he so cold? Was his race this cold? It felt like Emet-selch but with none of the backstory (not praising FFXIV, its crazy fanbase, nor its mediocre story, but Emet was legitimately an amazingly-written villain). I think Ultima would be more believable if his backstory was explored with more than a single monologue. It felt like the final quarter of this game was rushed and needed to be at least as long as the prior three quarters. So many subplots dropped, so many character arcs cut down and torched. It left a very bad taste in my mouth after the enjoyable first three quarters of the game, even though it's only a FF game in name and nothing else.