Final Fantasy XIII - Initial Thoughts

[RicardoSene]

Hello all.

I’m from Brazil, and that’s my 1st post here, so forgive me for any error with the writing.

I’m playing FFXIII right now, I didn’t finished it yet, but I just got into the 10th chapter. The problem is, I found strange some parts of the story that seems to present a negative aspect of the religion (more specific of our lovely Catholic Faith).

While in doubt of this being just my thoughs or not, I did some google and found some ppl indeed linking FFXIII with a criticism of the religion.

So I found this forum and I though I could open a thread with fellow catholics to discuss the theological problems of the game.

Just keep in mind I’m still playing the game, so I didn’t see the ending yet. That’s all for now, and the Catholics who played the game could describe their feelings about the game. The final idea is to fully stretch each topic of the moral/theological problem with the game in details.

Best regards.

 

[SergioRJ]

Hey Ricardo,

The last Final Fantasy game I played was part IX for the psone, many aeons ago . I quit playing jrpgs for some reason, but used to play this kind of game quite avidly on the old consoles(Saturn, GBA, psone, dreamcast).

Anyway, to most japanese, western religions are quite alien and you see that in their games. Most jrpgs are set in westernized fictional medieval settings and it really shows how they lack that knowledge. Walking in towns in most of the games from the classic series(Breath of Fire, Final fantasy, Dragon Quest, etc) you see churches, nuns, priests… but again, it is all portrayed very naively and without consequence. A very silly interpretation of our religion customs.

With all the anti-catholicism of recent times, it is no surprise that they have taken to portraying organized religion in a negative way. At least they portray it at all… western game developers tend to focus on fantasy settings or simply pretend religion doesn’t exist when they are dealing with the real world. It’s tabu.