Headscratchers / Final Fantasy Type-0

• If the world of Orience has its inhabitants literally live by having their memories erased anytime any living being they know dies, then how does Class Zero gain experience?
  • If you meant by gain experience by learning from someone else that died before, then the answer is they learn everything, but not remembering from who they learned it.
  • Alternately, Kazusa's experiments prove that memories are stored within the flesh, as well as in the heart and mind - as far as combat experience goes, muscle memory can fill in when the mind isn't there.
  • Also, there are some missable scenes with Ace in the backgarden. You have to play as Ace and when you sit on the bench to rest, Ace starts to actually remember bits and pieces of his conversation with Izana. This seems to imply that your memories are still there, just buried deep in your subconscious. Talking to an orderly after Aria dies, the orderly says that she feels as if she is waiting for someone to come back and afterwards you unlock another chapter in the Rubicus showing how Aria died. There are also Cater's feelings of deja vu.
• "Each city-state in the Lorican Alliance organized a troop of mounted paladins"- WAIT A SECOND. Mounted paladins? Loricans are huge, and if Atra and Enkidu are any indication, these guys wear plate mail that puts a Baron dark knight to shame. What do these guys ride?
  • Trained Great Tauricorns, maybe?
    • Actually, that makes a lot of sense. There are a lot of Doublicorn-style enemies in the Black Tortoise Crevasse and Ultima Ground Zero.
• So Orience was stuck in the same spiral 600,000,000+ times because two fal'Cie were trying to open Etro's gate and kept resetting the spiral everytime they failed. Considering that Dr Arecia was using Class Zero, it makes sense that she will need to keep keep resetting and trying again and again until their souls became strong enough to become Agito and they could open the gates. But what about Gala? He wants to open the gates by sacrificing everyone in Orience so that the rush of souls would force the gates open. He should have been able to achieve this goal the first time Class Zero failed, and he slaughtered everybody in Orience.
  • Except, the rush of souls isn't enough to get the gate open. Yes, Orphan and Caius were stopped before they could try, but the resetting of the spiral indicates that killing everybody doesn't cut it. One would assume that Gala has since resorted to "the same, but more" while Arecia kept trying different approaches to Class Zero's sacrifice.
    • But surely after 600,000,000+ spirals, Gala can see that his method still isn't working?
    • Fal'Cie are stubborn bastards. Atomos and Dahaka were still running the same search when Fang and Vanille woke up as they were when they went to sleep; even Arecia had to be told things were different this spiral. Gala probably just didn't get the memo.
• The above brings to mind another bit of Fridge Logic. Was Dr Arecia not keeping watch to see what Class Zero will do in this spiral? She is hoping to use them to open the gate after all. Why would she need to be told that they did things more differently this spiral?
  • It's all a matter of what she was focusing on, and what exactly was different. At the end of the spiral, their objective is to open Etro's Gate. Naturally, her focus would have been on the gate during Tempus; what was different this spiral was Class Zero - and, perhaps more reasonably, a whole frickin' lot of other people being willing to face death.
• How did Machina and Rem not see each other at Akademeia for two months? Akademeia does not seem like a terribly large place.
  • Observation of the Rubicus, combined with Rem's claim that they met one another at a drill and Seven's observation that seeing a lot of the same class is a common - but not constant - occurence, indicates that Akademeia normally maintains a stricter schedule of training and lectures, and the war has resulted in the Agito Cadets' idling as seen in-game.