Dissidia Final Fantasy/Fridge

Fridge Logic

• Dissidia 012 makes it explicitly clear what the Crystals are with a cutscene right before the first storyline showing Cosmos imbuing her Warriors with her powers, and Lightning's narration that this power will manifest for them as Crystals eventually. However this causes a number of problems, because Tidus, Terra and Cloud were Warriors of Chaos at this time and never took part in this. Thus there's no explanation for why they are able to manifest Crystals in the next cycle—you could make the case for Tidus that his Crystal was meant to be Jecht's since Jecht transferred his light to Tidus, but that doesn't work because it would fly against The Emperor's plans for him. And of course by the end of the 12th cycle Lightning, Laguna, Vaan, Yuna, Tifa and Kain die before manifesting their Crystals, so what happened to Cosmos' power inside them?
  • Well, there are ways and ways to see. As for Tidus, like you said, Jecht gave him the power of Cosmos that was on himself. There was probably still some remains of it inside of himself, specially with how narration mentions that Jecht's willpower was so strong that his crystal could have appeared at any second. So Emperor's plan still works (or at least, makes as much sense as anything in Final Fantasy games). As for Cloud and Terra (unmarked spoiled ahead): After Terra defeated a horde of Manekins, she arrived at Cosmos, and she granted her some of her power right there. Cloud? Well, he prayed to Cosmos while he was dying at the hands of Chaos, and Cosmos listened, and it seemed like right there she sent him a token of her power as well, so he'd awaken as her new chosen warrior during the next cycle. At least, those are my interpretations.
  • And as the Doomed by Canon group fade away, they seem to be shedding Light or some sort of energy. That could very well be Cosmos's power going back to where it belongs.
  • There IS an explanation, Golbez doesn't put the idea to give the Warriors enough power that it would kill her and therefore make the next cycle the very last until after 012. Wo L, Firion, Cloud, Zidane an the other all got the lion's share of their crystal shaping powers at the start of 013, so the issue of the other not being there the first time is completely irrelevant.

• Duodecim. Yuna's chapter. Tidus just took the bullet for Yuna. Sure, the fight was meant to show that you don't mess with Yuna's loved ones, but shouldn't Yuna (who was also a White Mage in X) be the one tending to Tidus while Jecht goes all Papa Wolf on Emperor Mateus' ass?
  • She doesn't have any white magic spells in Duodecim. The game is pretty good about getting rid of Gameplay Story Segregation so her using white magic when she has none wouldn't make any sense. Also I saw it as a bit of their personalities that aren't always shown. Jecht truly does love his son and wishes to help him and Yuna won't stand those who hurt her friends.

• It is made clear the 13th cycle is the only victory the Cosmos warriors have ever won, for the first twelve cycles the Warriors of Chaos won. But in the two cycles we players see, they seem pretty un-unified. Look at the various Warriors of Chaos between the two games—Cloud and Kuja don't want to participate, Sephiroth has his own interests and simply doesn't care, Exdeath cares but doesn't make much of an effort, Golbez is a traitor, Jecht, Tidus and Terra are only serving Chaos because they're brainwashed, and the Cloud of Darkness has no problem giving the enemy confidential information if it means it'll make things interesting for her. The only villains who seem actually interested in winning are Garland, The Emperor, Kefka and Ultimecia. That said, just how did these guys keep winning for twelve rounds in a row?
  • Been wondering the same thing. One of my first thoughts was that they always had the Manekins, but then that makes you wonder how the Manekins didn't kill for good more warriors by now. Another possibility is that they are just that much more powerful, which could be the case considering that, in each Final Fantasy, each character needs their whole team to ultimately defeat the Big Bad. It's perhaps because of finally having Cosmos' power properly grown within them in the 13th Cycle that they were finally able to challenge them and win. But that's just a theory. One way or another, Duodecim really left some plot holes all around, if you ask me.
  • Considering those killed by the Manekins are Killed Off for Real along with their exponential replacement rate and the lack of any from previous cycles i find it unlikely it started before the 12th. Because the purpose of the cycles are to make Chaos into the ultimate weapon my guess is that in each of the previous cycles his warriors would weed out as many of Cosmos's they could while any survivors would be curbstomped by Chaos, since Cosmos never seems to directly fight a stalemate's as good as a win for Chaos. Also since fighting regains memories while falling loses them its possible that after 11 consecutive wins Chaos's warriors would remember their goals and those who werent content with fighting the same people until the end of the world lost motivation. i know some of this is probably WMG but thats my 2 cents.
    • The reason Chaos summoned warriors in the first place was so that he wouldn't have to fight Cosmos warriors. Though he's perfectly fine with his warriors doing what they want since he doesn't want to force them to fight.
  • Actually, during "An Unfold Tale", if I remember correctly, the Cid moogle tells you the warriors of Chaos grew stronger and stronger as they kept winning; and by the 13th cycle the difference in strength was overwhelming. So just like it was suggested, they were strong by themselves in the first place, but after winning a few times they grew even STRONGER and become more likely to keep winning and getting even STRONGER.

• This may kinda mix with Just Bug Me, but whatever. There's one thing I don't understand: What in the world is Lightning's relationship with roses? I played all of Final Fantasy XIII and I can't remember any connection from Lightning to any type of flower, yet she states in one of the Report Scenes that she felt a connection to Firion's Wild Rose. I know her HP Attacks now come with Petal Power, but that's another thing that doesn't make any sense, since she didn't have anything like that at all in her original game. Why exactly did they add all this, then? Unless it's secretly foreshadowing something from Final Fantasy XIII-2, I just don't get it.
  • Lightning does have a bit of a rose motif in FFXIII, most visible when she summons Odin. Her Crystarium crystal is pink and shaped like a rose, and the Odin summon in FFXIII features a lot of flying red rose petals; that's where Lightning's HP attacks come from, which is the reason for the Petal Power.
    • Guess that's what I get for having pretty much never used the summons. ^^U

• Here's some Fridge Logic that could spawn even more Dissidia games. The ending tells us the Warrior of Light sets off for Cornelia with his Crystal, mirroring the start of the original Final Fantasy. So, what about the other three Light Warriors?
  • I believe Dissidia is suggesting a Retcon there, after all, he's been said to be a Composite Character. Also, I don't see much of a reason for which the original Final Fantasy's story couldn't work with only one Warrior of Light.

Fridge Brilliance

• In any other fighting game, even a light attack has the potential to finish off the opponent, yet most players prefer to use their slow, heavy attacks and/or their Limit Break in order to win the fight in the most awesome manner possible. In this game, the only way to actually defeat your opponent is to use HP attacks, which are usually the largest and flashiest moves in the characters' arsenal. In short, you have no choice but to defeat your opponent in the flashiest way possible.
• If you watch Garland's attacks, he isn't swinging his sword back and forth like most other characters. With Round Edge and Lance Charge especially, his attacks have him swing his sword once and let it move on its own with the momentum it builds up. Considering how ungodly huge it is, consider the massive strength that would be required to wield it like a proper sword—swinging it this way is probably the only way he can do it without breaking something!
• Why is Cloud, a non-mage character, the only character able to use the three levels of a spell of the same element (Fire, Fira and Firaga)? In FFVII's world, a mastered Fire Materia would have allowed him to use all three versions of the spell. Likewise, in Dissidia 012 Tifa has all three levels of the Blizzard spell.
• Why does Yuna remember Tidus and her pilgrimage when she's forgotten almost everything else? Recall her speech during the ending of Final Fantasy X:

"The people and friends that we have lost...or the dreams that have faded... never forget them."

• • Of course, the nature of the conflict has warriors regain more memories of their homelands as they battle on, and the Emperor refers to her as a 'veteran', so she's obviously been around a few cycles, too.
• In Dissidia 012, Squall's gameplay makes him one of the best (if not the best) suited ones for relying on the Assist Feature makes quite a contrast with his "I Work Alone" attitude... Until you remember that his character arc in Final Fantasy VIII saw him move from beliving that being alone makes life easier for him as opposed to relying on others.
  • Further brilliance: If Squall is the one being an Assist, he is better suited to do a bunch of Bravery attacks on his own than to do combos with the main character. So, essentially, you are hiring him to do his own thing. Once a SeeD always a SeeD.
• Gabranth's attacks are more violent versions of his identical twin Basch's Quickenings, and his voice actor changed from Michael Rogers in Final Fantasy XII to Keith Ferguson, Basch's voice actor, who struggles to replicate Gabranth's British accent & the end result is the character sounds like Basch trying to sound like his brother. At the end of Final Fantasy XII, Basch assumes Gabranth's identity, so it's not out of the realm of believability that "Gabranth" in this game is really Basch under his brother's identity.
  • And then Gabranth suddenly starts sounding like Basch because Keith has decided to scrap the British accent. Curious, is it not?
• In a storyline scene with Gilgamesh, he encounters Squall, Vaan, and Zidane. They all encounter him in their own games. Zidane remarks how Gilgamesh would look familiar if he had more arms, like he did in IX.
• Many a player has remarked on how badly Feral Chaos' summon backfires on him in boss fights. Weird, isn't it? Why would the designers do that? ...Well, because in the game storyline, Feral's summon, the character Shinryu, really does hate him by the time Feral is fought as a boss!
• Why is Cecil, of all people, the Shipper on Deck in 012? Two very good reasons—first, if you assume he was taken from a post-The After Years world, he's been happily married for almost 20 years, so it makes sense he'd be the one of the group with the best relationship advice. And second, it's a callback to the medieval interpretation of love and romance, back when they didn't necessarily mean sexual attraction, but were instead used to express loyalty and friendship, even between two people of the same gender (it would be completely in-line for a knight to say he loved his king in order to convey fealty). Cecil is the typical Knight in Shining Armor and comes from an heavily medieval-influenced game where he was raised in precisely such an environment.
• A minor one, but this troper noticed that during replays of when Exdeath tells the Warriors of Cosmos that the crystals were Cosmos's strength, and gathering them are why she fell, Tidus was always the one who realized it first. Perhaps he remembers being an unwitting part of someone's sacrifice in a roundabout way?
• Why is Terra's status as a Magic Knight downplayed in Dissidia, with her being more mage than fighter? After all, she has a sword, but only ever uses it in chase sequences. 3 reasons:

1) To differentiate her from the other characters, who all fight and use magic to some extent.
2) She is, unlike the other characters in game, an inherently magical being, being half esper.

3) FFVI is largely considered to the point in the series when magic was at its most useful, so it makes sense that a character from that game would emphasize magic more than anyone.

• • This would be more accurately a WMG, but once I thought that maybe metals in FFVI's universe are of relatively bad quality (hence why in that world whenever magic appears everybody jumps in the bandwagon), and that's why Terra doesn't use her sword. Her Apocalypse might be a wonderful weapon in her own world, but here it is no match to even the Onion Knight's starting sword.
• Vaan helps Terra, and when she's confused why when they're on opposing sides he explains that it doesn't matter which side they're on, people are people. It's Final Fantasy XIIs Grey and Gray Morality all over again!
• Kefka being played up as a Manipulative Bastard in 012--he pits his enemies against each other and manipulates other people to fight in order to get what he wants rather than confronting them himself. Give him nicer hair and make him more articulate, and he's a stand-in for Vayne! And hey, where does Vaan fight Kefka in his story—Sky Fortress Bahamut!
• Why are all the areas not destroyed in the "shattering of worlds" the places were you fight the final boss of their games? Because Chaos, as has been noted, is a surprisingly Benevolent Boss and wants his minions to be comfortable, so he makes sure to preserve the places where each is most relaxed—where they wait for the heroes.
• I can't believe I didn't notice this before, but the chain skills are a Shout-Out to chess. Straight chains are rooks, cross chains are bishops, jump chains are knights, round chains are kings and multichains are queens.

Fridge Horror

• Feral Chaos' teeth are red. And not, like "red because it's just the way they are"; red as in "white and stained red". One can only guess what he did after cornering his victims. Although this could be an incentive for unlocking his (so far only) Alt outfit.
• The game establishes that the first Dissidia game was the thirteenth cycle of Chaos and Cosmos's conflict, while 012 shows the events of the twelfth cycle. In 012, we not only see the characters from the original game, but we also meet new characters: Lightning, Vaan, Prishe, Yuna, Laguna, Tifa, and Kain. This is also the game which introduces the idea that if you are killed by a Manikin, then you're gone for good, which might have been the fate of Lightning, Kain, Yuna, Laguna, Tifa, and Vaan (jury is out on what happened to Prishe). So the fridge horror comes in here: in the eleven cycles that we don't see, how many other beloved Final Fantasy characters might have met the same fate as the 012 gang?. And keep in mind, the first game opens by telling you the Cosmos's side has been getting its can kicked for a while.