- At first when I saw her, the only thing that came into mind was transformers and left it and left it at that. But after playing Kingdom hearts final mix 1, 2 and Birth by sleep made me think otherwise. Keyblade masters have the ability to go to other worlds, So it could've been possible that she can end up at grand pulse through a black hole like the one used to get to hollow bastion. When Etro knew of her presence, she modified her to follow that place rules and use for her needs by using her armor and her vehicle as the basis for her main body with the soul inside as a sprit or a chip. Another hint is when her axe. It looks has a striking resemblance to one of terra's keyblade and riku's keyblade shows that they can lack keychains. she could've been around during the keyblade war or even before and could've been a master or at a high level at one point. She can morph her weapon like terra, She has as a core element, fire. her armor looks like the ones used in birth by sleep. Valkyrian Scythe looks like a combo that can be used with a keyblade. She can use her magic with her weapon. Finally at the Chocobo park Nautilus with Sazh on the ground are heart symbols close to the KH logo.
- fal'Cie have Focuses as well. Notice how all the fal'Cie seem to have a 'purpose' both on Cocoon and on Pulse. Kujata runs Euride Gorge. Anima was (presumably) the protector of Oerba village. Phoenix is the sun on Cocoon. Carbuncle, Bismarck, Atomos, Eden: They all do something.
- Presumably they were given these foci by Maker.
- Or were they? Notice how only Barthandelus and Orphan display some kind of character? All the others are just powerful monsters. What if...the reason that the fal'Cie are like that is because they're Cie'th?
- fal'Cie Cie'th. Here's the theory: At one point, every single fal'Cie had free will. Then, they were given their focuses by Maker. So they react similarly to the party. They try to challenge their fate, and very nearly every single one of them fails. Being fal'Cie, they don't turn into regular Cie'th: they are condemned to perform their set tasks as mere puppets, with no independent thought left. Orphan's cleverer than that, though. He doesn't rebel, but Eden does. Orphan's focus is to provide Eden with strength, so he just does that.
- At this point, Maker ditches the universe, presumably to attend the post-creation afterparty.
- So now Orphan's all alone. He's been left by his 'parent' as it were, and every single other fal'Cie in the universe is a mindless puppet. Of course, there are humans lying around, but who cares about them, right? Some fal'Cie keep on with a limited degree of free will, much like the Undying. Even so, the Undying aren't all that interesting to be around.
- And Orphan is PO'd. He is having none of this. So he comes up with a plan. He's going to bring Maker back, and kill it. Much like the party planned to take down the fal'Cie after they turned into l'Cie. He sort of 'cuts off' a part of himself, which becomes Barthandelus. Orphan then lies dormant for some time. Barthandelus, as a part of Orphan, has a job to do. The plan is to summon Ragnarok. See, Orphan's Cradle isn't just Orphan's Cradle - the Tesseracts and Narthex Throne are actually Orphan itself. The gold wheel thing is its 'heart'. By summoning Ragnarok inside the Cradle, Orphan can assimilate Ragnarok, destroy Cocoon and then get his revenge by killing Maker. Once Maker is dead, Orphan-slash-Ragnarok can absorb its power and then remake the world where fal'Cie are no longer slaves. Barthandelus tries once, but (as we know) it doesn't work, and just makes a hole in Cocoon. So he gets patient. He pulls a Vestige from Oerba with the two l'Cie who were meant to become Ragnarok inside it, and then places the Vestige on Cocoon. This, he reasons, will make it easier for them to make their way into the Cradle and summon Ragnarok. He doesn't expect Lightning, Sazh, Hope and Snow and Serah to turn up, but hey, the more the merrier right? The more there are, then statistically the better the chance of them getting to the Cradle.
- The practical upshot of this is that the entire game up to Orphan's first form is an extended fal'Cie-mediated grinding area. The l'Cie need to get powerful enough to summon Ragnarok, so Barthandelus throws gradually more and more powerful enemies at them. Occasionally he steps in and sets them in the right direction. When he thinks they're ready, he dumps them on Pulse. Then when he thinks they're ready, he lets them come back to Cocoon. He turns up inside the cradle, then Barthandelus merges back into Orphan.
- Then Orphan's plan gets screwed over when the party decide not to summon Ragnarok, preferring to kick Orphan's ass instead.
- So really, the game isn't about the party, but about Orphan wanting to build a better world at a massive price.
- After all, he just wanted some friends to play with.
- Based on looks and personality, she's the distaff counterpart of Zack. And we all know what happened to him.
- Sort of correct. Since they got crystallized together, does that mean Vanille is Aerith?
- After the end of the game, Lightning gets crystallized for some reason, but without her Nakama. While under stasis, she is moved to our planet or simply awakes in the present day, in which most of the higher technology has been destroyed. To cope, Lightning gets an Important Haircut, a Vespa, a Rickenbacker bass guitar, gold contacts for the hell of it, and another name change—forgetting or just ignoring the fact that discarding her identity didn't work the first time. This time, her mental strain is so great she becomes the exact opposite of her former personality: an insane, flirtatious, selfish compulsive liar. "Raharu" meets Amarao and completes a Focus shortly after that, giving people the impression that she's immortal after waking up twenty or thirty years later, and since it doesn't matter either way she makes no attempt to correct any rumors or bother with a real name change. Naota reminds her of Hope, and while she does sincerely care about him, she forgoes getting close to spare herself more suffering. Atomsk is a Fal'Cie who she's seeking out in an attempt to return to a normal life, but since nobody knows what that means anymore she just calls him a space pirate to sound cool.
- Pink hair, SwissArmyWeapons, superhuman strength, ability to manipulate gravity, mechas, some military rank. It doesn't have to make much sense, considering the anime.
What kind of mecha warhorse doesn't have a mane? The kind that's trying to hide something. Due to having the same mix of badassery and femininity, the unicorn decided Lightning was the best possible rider. The rose is actually a many-pointed glass star the unicorn was trapped in, which also broke its horn off, probably.
Forget what the trailers show, no matter how prominent Jihl and Yaag might be, its just a big huge red herring. The real villain will pop out of nowhere and kill them both off in a matter of seconds (and nobody will care). Sazh's little Chocofro will transform into a fifty-foot monster of pure evil, then fuse with Cocoon to become a giant death star of evil energy, and try to existence. Most likely it will win too.
- Corrolary: Sazh's chocobo is a Pulse Fal'Cie
- One, it directs everyone in the party, like when Sazh says "The bird says 'no'"
- Two, it isn't afraid of men with machine guns, it even attacks one of them in the face to break Sazh out of prison
- Three, it isn't afraid of Sazh's eidolan proving it must be more than it appears
- Four, it's too cute. Very suspicious.
- Five, only a fal'cie can decrystalize a L'cie which explains why four of group thaw out in the ending.
- Six, though Sanctum Fal'cie are the ones directing them, it is a Gran Pulse Fal'cie that transforms them and so the chick removes the brands ones Cuccon is destroyed
- Think about it - the bird is there during every battle and is usually shown just before his transformation from the Dysley guise into the actual fal'Cie form. Barthandelus doesn't merge with Orphan until Menrva flies into the...pool thing. You also get no CP from the fights with him - because you're not actually fighting him!
- That makes sense! Also, Menrva can be seen in several scenes prior to actually even seeing SupahPope, I think even as early as shortly after the first train sequence. At the very least, that owl's an aspect of Ol' Bart.
- It could be, at the start of Chapter 11 when Hope gets injured, the bird flew back to the group trying to tell make it clear that Hope was in trouble, nobody was any the wiser until Vanille studied him, saw something that alarmed her and exclained "his brand!" meaning that the chocobo has a l'Cie brand, and it was doing something, most possibly it was the chocobo's Eidolon that came out and mauled Hope.
- Frankly that would be kind of awesome.
- Frankly, that's fact as I recall. Versus XIII occurs on Pulse, but not in the future. It actually happens in the past, and the city-scape that's featured is destroyed over the intervening years.
- Jossed; some Cie'th stones mention men.
- It even brags about it. When Serah and Dajh come walking out in the end sequence, it pops out with a distinctively proud noise, and acts all "Look what I did!"
- Actually, if you read the flavor text for the marks, you will realize that a few of them are people taking on a mark that somebody else failed at (notably, the Cie'th stone that gives you Mission 16 was after the same thing that the Cie'th that gives you Mission 14 was after). However, I do think the theory of Titan wiping out mankind in the name of "survival of the fittest" is extremely likely.
- True. So either the Cie'th stones we see are the first ones who failed and weren't killed in the attempt, or the amount of time it takes to become a Cie'th stone is variable.
- Don't forget the Goblin Chief marks. Titan didn't just test them. He made them compete against each other. Also, the C'ieth Stones in the Faultwarrens are suspiciously placed. They're l'Cie chosen by Titan to take part in his Trials, sadistically giving them tougher opponents so that when they failed they become the C'ieth Stone for that mark. Explains why tougher marks show up a lot more than the easier marks and how the Trials branch off.
- Actually, if you read the flavor text for the marks, you will realize that a few of them are people taking on a mark that somebody else failed at (notably, the Cie'th stone that gives you Mission 16 was after the same thing that the Cie'th that gives you Mission 14 was after). However, I do think the theory of Titan wiping out mankind in the name of "survival of the fittest" is extremely likely.
- This might actually be the reason why, from what is seen of XIII-2, the Cocoon denizens are trying to rebuild on Cocoon while some (mostly people from Bodhum) decide to brave Gran Pulse. Hearing of the Trials from Snow, Hope, or Sazh (sans Lightning for obvious reasons) and explaining the vast appearance of the C'ieth stones in the Archylte Steppe, much of Cocoon would have become too scared of that gigantic thing that eats monsters and spits them back out to make stronger ones turning them into l'Cie. In the E3 demo, when viewing the map of Bresha Ruins there are C'ieth stones in the area. Now that's odd... those weren't there five years prior...
- Pretty sure this is the canon of what happened.
- Lightning quit anyway, why would she want to join again?
- Because Serah is safe now. Also, there is a huge power vacuum in the military and the rest of Cocoon society so she might want to become a leader to make sure they get on the right track.
- It doesn't even stop with the deaths of the soldiers. I mean, for one thing, did any of the civilians even SEE the main characters stop Barthandeleus? Did they even know that he really was the main problem? These people have been forced out of Cocoon... In fact Cocoons basically a big crystal ball now, and they now have to live in world chock full of dangerous monsters without any of the benefits the Sanctum Falcie gave them at Cocoon. And for all we know, they're probably still worried that the person next to them could very well be a L'cie. That's what they believed the "relocation" was for in the first place. I'd say it's very easy to imagine that the main characters would be resented for a very very veeeeeery long time..Someone even wrote a fic about it http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6297621/1/
- This is pointed out in the epilogue novella, Episode -i-. When reuniting with Serah and Dajh after awakening from crystal stasis, the remaining party see the Cavalry forces land on Gran Pulse and tell them to hide while they evacuate the people of Cocoon. Only Bodhum was affected beyond repair by the advent of Ragnarok, and the Purge ironically saved the people who were there, while every other city was spared—albeit severely damaged and on par with our world's worst natural disasters. During Hope's focus in the novella he knows that they've all killed countless soldiers that would have affected their families and had to be patient before being able to reunite with his father. XIII-2's demo, however, shows the Cocoon NPCs either bemoaning the loss of their paradise or are actually happy despite all that's happened (one NPC recalls forgetting how real rain felt like. Another talk in disgust about people from the Academy that claim their lives are ruined because of the l'Cie). Facts about Serah and Noel being able to access l'Cie powers and paradoxes are still in the air, but PSICOM gladly accepts their help when dealing with Paradox Alpha in the Bresha Ruins.
- Wait a minute. Didn't Lightning say that the purpose of the Purge was to kill off everyone and NOT to take them to Pulse? I figured that Psicom actually started seriously trying to save everyone after Yaag called the Purge OFF right before the end of the game.
- Yes, Yaag called off the hunt and perhaps, behind the scenes, the remaining Cavalry revealed the truth to PSICOM and after Ragnarok destroyed Cocoon that's when they initiated the disaster relief. They may be social outcasts-not by people still hating them, but because people will be alienated by them. Should have pointed that out when I made my post about XIII-2's stuff. There will be people who are more than interested to hear the story straight from the l'Cie themselves, while others still need just a little bit more time to get over the shock of the big changes in their lives. The l'Cie are like war veterans, fresh from the battle field. If anything they'd be given some space. 5 years is a long time. Perhaps by then, the people will be more willing to accept the truth (paradoxes and time anomalies not withstanding, of course).
- Lightning quit anyway, why would she want to join again?
- Not just Dysley: he could have assumed a human form long before becoming Dysley. Taking one shape for around/over 500 years would be too suspicious, so way before becoming Galenth, he transformed into someone else, got elected Primarch, resigned and appointed someone else, then using his fal'Cie powers, turned them into unrecognizable Sacrifices and assumed that person's form, keeping himself as Primarch every couple of years/decades before repeating the cycle and therefore ensuring that the myth about Pulse being Hell was perpetuated. Until Lightning and Co. showed up.
- The Maker and Etro are two different beings. Plus Etro is the one humanity was created from. The Maker is the one who made Pulse Fal'Cie
- This one is clearly canon. The cie'th stone Vanille reads after the second fight with Bart pretty much spells it out.
Lindzei is a Smug Snake who lied his ass off to lure people into (rather than out of) "Paradise", served as a "god" of a world of his own fabrication with the intention of leading the people in it to ruin, tried to discredit the very God he was intitially serving in the first place by imitating Her, deceived the 'true believers' (the people of Pulse) into thinking he had left their worlds entirely (or very well never existed), whose forms grew increasingly angelic in each battle. How is he not some form of Satan?
- Lindzei being associated with serpents. He's a literal Smug Snake!
- God in this series is male and named Buniberzei. He created the first three Fal'Cie Maker/Hallowed Pulse, Fell Lindzei, and Etro which are worshiped as Gods and Goddesses by humanity. He also went into a dormant state out of fear of death.
Yes, yes this was based solely off of his voice actor.
- This makes Lightning comment about names hit harder than it should.Lightning: I had to be strong for Serah so I thought I needed to forget my past. I became Lightning. I thought that by changing my name, I could change who I was. I was just a kid.
- "Straight and not interested" seems a very likely explanation. Think about it - for one thing, she's busy fighting all the time. And, throughout the game, her possibilities are rather thin on the ground. The guy that she hates who's engaged to her sister? The widower? The angry boy?
- I mean if you read that part of the story you will see Lightning also commented on Yuj's clothes, that mean she has the hots for him? She was saying they were amateur fighters and the attire would impede them in a fight, nothing Freud about it. Also that scene with Fang, she was getting her temper under control by that point of the story and not blowing up over stuff like that, it was part of her development. She glomps Hope because he saw her as a mother substitute and was trying to help keep that image up.
- "Straight and not interested" seems a very likely explanation. Think about it - for one thing, she's busy fighting all the time. And, throughout the game, her possibilities are rather thin on the ground. The guy that she hates who's engaged to her sister? The widower? The angry boy?
As a corollary, Anima made sure to give Serah a Focus that would immediately leave her encased in crystal and out of the way because it knew that if left free with the task of destroying Cocoon she would find some way to make it all end with everyone hugging, the opposite of what it wanted.
Orphan's left form, according to the wiki is supposed to represent Lindzei. But only two fal'Cie, at first glance, were absorbed- if you're not counting Menrva. If you are counting it, then Orphan's trinity appearance makes a lot more sense. And as for why Lindzei would be helping Barthandelus with all this in the first place, why wouldn't it? Pretty much all of the fal'Cie long for death; by taking Menrva's form and helping Barthandelus, Lindzei is "laying low" and avoiding detection while helping Barty bring about Cocoon's destruction.
But what about the immortal Fal'cie? Well, while they are more durable than humans, their ability to retain memories is not perfect: either there is a limited amount of information they can safeguard, or their memories get corrupted with time (or both), and eventually, they end up believing the creator myth as well. (and maybe even the fact that some of them have personalities is not an original feature but a glitch produced by the slow degrading of originally incredibly complex but non-sentient machines)Having forgotten their origins, they now only have bitterness toward their "focus", in other words, toward the fact that they are mere tools of mankind: which is especially hard for the Cocoon Fal'cie: they don't have a grand project to work for like the terraforming of a whole planet: they are merely automatic glorified nannies, the great irony being that by killing the humans in Cocoon, the Fal'cies are actually about the destroy the very "Maker" they are trying to summon.
- The lore states that humanity was born from Goddess Etros blood when she sacrificed herself and entered the land of the dead. The Maker is the God Hallowed Pulse and Fell Lindzei is the 'Maker' of Cocoon.
- Final Fantasy XIII-2 spoiler: But in FFXIII-2, it turns out that humans are indeed capable of building completely functional fal'Cie, including the power to turn humans into l'Cie and Cie'th. And apparently humanity is at least sometimes inclined to do so. So even if contradicted by canon, this possibility is physically possible and in my opinion far more interesting.
- Honestly that's what I thought when I first played the game, before X-2 came out and some of the Wordof God about canon came out. My own theory was that Gran Pulse was Earth, but in the very far future, while the fal'Cie, magic, and the like were the products of human-developed nanotechnology not even the fal'Cie fully understood anymore even though they instinctively knew how to "infect" humans with the nanotech, creating the l'Cie.
Just look at the opening cinematic's, or any other cinematic showing Pulse, look at the wide variety of creatures, the nature of machinery and the 'Towers' littering the land. If the Fal'Cie can control so many things, as well as one large 'worm like' Fal'Cie that resides within and controlling a tower, it just makes sense that they would eventually hide as towers themselves to remain in control of the world. Technology would obviously be lost thanks to the lack of Fal'Cie to cater to the people, and everyone would be reduced to medieval style standards, with lost technology littering the world. Pulse already has ruins that fill the land, a few hundred years more with knowledgeable people concerning survival skills and the technology in place would ruin the land further. The 'ancients' could have been the first of the humans to come to Pulse, using what technology and knowledge they have to enhance their lives to a level near what they were once given, with disastrous results (leading to the dragon program, based on Ragnarok). Drone's are very likely made up of C'ieth and attempts to recreate L'Cie. Augusta Tower which features in XIII-2, with the ability to manipulate the world to a large degree as well as create all kinds of creatures. This is very reminiscent of the Towers from the PD universe, and considering it made everything worse to almost apocalyptic levels, it fits the theme of the origin to Panzer Dragoon.
- The Archylte Steppe was always reminiscent to the Calm Lands, indeed. And when you move from there, you reach the mountainous, snowy Oerba, roughly where the Gagazet mountain might have been.
- The only thing confirmed is that Snow does have spiky hair (in XIII-2).
- The GC aren't super-soldiers, but aside from that I think it kinda makes sense, but you ignore the fact she has quite a good Strength.
- In the last room in Orphan's cradel when you warp in, there's a statue you come across. It has mishapen curved arms and an enormous headdress. If you look, the pose it's in clearly replicates the symbol the Cocoon fal'Cie and l'Cie both are branded with. So the statue/mark is what the Cocoon fal'Cie see as their Maker.
- To add to this, the endings of the Fabula Nova Crystallis seem to be getting progressively worse.
Final Fantasy 13 had a Bittersweet Ending, with the Crystallization of Fang and Vanille, the deaths of several people on Cocoon, and a the fact that the survivors were stuck in what was essentially a Death World. Type 0 had a major Downer Ending, however there was a possibility to Earn Your Happy Ending in a New Game Plus. 13-2 has Multiple Endings, all of them downers, and actually Retcons the ending of the first game into more of a Downer, what with the whole, "Lightning erased from history" thing.
All of Versus' trailers have been rather dark, chances are the trend is either going to continue, making it the single most depressing ending out of all of them, or make it the happiest ending as a subversion.
- Jossed by publicity for Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, which states that the game will provide a happy ending to Lightning's story.
One of the main themes of the game is never giving up, you have to always keep going forward and pursue a goal, never give into despair and hopelessness. Orphan's statement that humans can achieve the impossible through sheer willpower and determination is very reminiscent of spiral power. The fal'Cie in turn are incarnations/servants/aspects of the Anti-Spiral created to control humans, their personal growth has stalled and they cannot move beyond their set programming. Barthandelus wants to call back the Anti-Spiral by killing all humans because with no humans left in the world, the purpose of the fal'Cie is done and they will be taken to another world for a new purpose, and if the fal'Cie just die, they will still be released from their existences deprived of their creators's presence. Just like Gurren Lagann, the party calls them out on wishing for death and despair over seeking hope and life and declares that to try and make others suffer for that goal is selfish and cowardly. Gurren Lagann's theme is combining, Final Fantasy XIII's theme is transformation, shown in the characters's weapons, the Eidolons (which "coincidentally" are giant robots in this game), and the shapeshifting powers of the fal'Cie.
And of course, the game is a World of Badass that largely runs on Rule of Cool. Lightning's declaration of "We live to make the impossible possible" all but makes this theory canon.
- First: "Cie" means "magic". "l'" is a prefix meaning something like "with", so l'Cie are those "with magic". "fa" or maybe "fal" means "master", so "fal'Cie" means either "master of magic", of "master of the l'Cie", depending on whether the "l'" prefix is in there or if the "l" is part of a separate morpheme. Inspired by the Japanese version, "'th" means "corpse" or "zombie", perhaps originally a larger word like "tho" which got shortened, so "Cie'th" is "magic-using zombie".
- This theory implies that people discovered l'Cie first, and the trait they first noticed was that they used magic. Fal'Cie were encountered later, and first associated with being masters of the l'Cie. This implies that the fal'Cie at first hid their presence from humans, contra their overt involvement with the government of Cocoon. It also implies that Cie'th weren't recognized at first as deriving from l'Cie, and simply noticed for also using magic; this makes sense given their grotesque appearance and lack of their former selves' personalities.
- Second: "Cie" alone carries the meaning of "fal'Cie"; the "fal" is some sort of honorific prefix, meaning "royal" or "honored" or the like, or some other type of grammatical morpheme. The language forms its genitive case by truncation, so "l'Cie", is a rule-based shortening of "fal'Cie" and so literally means "of the fal'Cie", i.e. servant of them. As before, "'th" means something like "corpse", but here "Cie'th" then means "fal'Cie-related corpse".
- This theory has the advantage of respecting the relationships involved; fal'Cie are primary, and l'Cie and Cie'th are derived from them. But it does require some mysterious processes and meanings.
- Either way, these come from an ancient language no longer used, at least by humans. They carried the words into their current language (the one represented by English in the English version), but are most likely no longer aware of their structure.
It's called "subcontracting". 人◕‿‿◕人
In order to gather more energy than they can on their own, Kyubbey creates a series of robots to generate the Hope-Despair energy arc for him/them. In fact, they're responsible for the Pulse-Coccon war because they are Running Both Sides. Instead of "Magical Girl"s, the contractee is called a "L'cie": humanoid undead creature, possesses a power gem, and is compelled to complete a task given to them by the one who granted them superhuman magical power. This is a very stressful way of life and despair accelerates the transformation. If you do the hunts, you'll see that a lot of L'cie on Pulse were told to kill monsters, and sometimes Cieth, which are L'cie who have failed their focus.