Corpse Run 662: Food for thought
Ok, so the game is almost 30 years old but… spoiler warning I guess?
Just in case?
…
FINAL FANTASY ONE SPOILERS BELOW!
I can’t remember if I mentioned that Rich and I finished up the Final Fantasy run a week or two ago and I’m too lazy to check. So… we finished up the run and it was really neat.
Here’s my issue though. So basically what happens in Final Fantasy is this:
- [Present] The heroes of light kill Garland
- [Past] Garland is resurrected 2,000 years in the past by the four monster things
- Garland somehow doesn’t instantly reappear in the current day, but whatever
- [Present] The heroes of light kill the four monster things
- [Present] The heroes of light go back in time
- [Past] The heroes of light kill the four monster things
- [Past] The heroes of light kill Garland
- [Past and Present] The day is saved
First off, they killed Garland in the present at the very beginning of the game… day saved as far as I’m concerned. Who cares if Garland terrorizes the land for 2,000 years? It already happened and now that he’s dead the world can move forward. What does it matter if Garland constantly relives a 2,000 year sandbox? The rest of the world marches on.
There’s a serious ethical question that FF doesn’t address… considering that the present will be different if they change the past, the heroes of light basically murdered 2,000 years worth of people.
I mean, the world was already hustling and bustling at the beginning of the game… it’s not like whatever Garland was doing was that bad…
I dunno, it seems like killing Garland in the past might have been a poor choice.
i might be wrong since it’s been a while since i played it but the first time you kill garland, he hasn’t been around two thousands years, he had only just decided to betray the king, (meaning leaving him in control in the past would be the problem timeline)
I don’t know the canon but maybe its like DBZ time travel and THEIR present would still have the years of darkness, but their actions in the past also created a NEW timeline where the people of the past didn’t have to suffer like that?
(Not that DBZ time travel ever made sense either, but eh)
I haven’t played any of the remakes, so my memory is by no means reliable, but from what I remember :
1. Garland was not around for 2000 years.
2. The world does not match on. The world is basically mid-apocalypse and you’re fighting to save those who remain. Fail at any point and everyone (who hasn’t already died) dies.
3. “Ethics”? Seriously? From a ~30 year old game? Have you looked at video games released in 2016?
Garland is a recurrent character in Fantasy Fantasy (he is a villain in the 9th episode). Does that mean that killing him in the first game was… useless?
So it’s wrong to go back in time to kill Hitler/Garland. But it’s always a good idea to do so in the present.
However, alternate theory: The prophecy about the warriors of light was started by the heroes in the past. And if they hadn’t gone back, then killing Garland would have instantly resulted in Chaos, a far FAR more powerful and kinda immortal foe appearing and kicking their low-level asses.
Even worse, if you sent your worst enemy back in time, aren’t you kinda leaving him to wipe out your grandparents?
This is the kind of thing I find mega distracting in a lot of time-travel stories. When the timeline is changed, what happens from the perspective of folks IN that timeline?
Same thing in Back to the Future. Isn’t it like everyone got erased and replaced with dopplegangers?
Multiverse Theory ironically makes things simpler for me.