Zeroing In: Explaining Final Fantasy Type-0's Story, Sorta

I was all ready to clean the palette and leap into Dark Souls III fresh and focused, but I'll be darned by the Lords of Cinder themselves if I can't stop thinking about the way Final Fantasy Type-0 ended. The game's final act contain a series of non-sequitur curveballs that almost scream "well, we gave you all the hints that this was coming from incidental NPC dialogue and optional codex entries, so it's on you if you're completely flummoxed". As with everything else going on in Type-0, from its in-depth and varied gameplay mechanics to an underlying structure built around replays, there's a lot more than meets the eye with its plot and by ignoring a lot of its lore - I simply assumed it didn't have a whole lot worth reading, since most of it is locked away in the aforementioned optional codex entries (kinda like a Souls game in fact) - I let myself get nonplussed by a series of out-of-left-field twists towards the game's conclusion.

But let's rewind a bit.

I'll be discussing the game's plot in detail here, with my own interjections, for an article that's half to assuage my own peace of mind so I can better focus on the no doubt equally dense and labyrinthine mythos of Dark Souls III, and also to provide empathetic support to my fellow mod @zombiepie who is equally at odds right now attempting to dissect the plot of an entirely different Final Fantasy. (I'd ask him not to read this article though, since I slipped a few FFIX spoilers in here. Just stop here, dude. "Giant Bomb mod Mento writes about the confusing ending of Final Fantasy Type-0" if you need a blurb for the GBDuder Twitter account.)

Naturally, there will be plot spoilers aplenty after the initial "setting the stage" section up to and including how the game concludes and some post-game revelations, so I'd strongly advise you skip it unless you've also beaten the game or don't particularly care to play it but still want to wallow indulgently in some bizarre JRPG storytelling. The chances of anyone caring too much about how a modern Final Fantasy game ends is slim enough, but if you're in the same boat and feel like you can clarify a few things, or just want to register your own confusion, be sure to respond in the comments.

It's kind of nuts that this is the second time in a row that I've had to try to explain the plot to a Final Fantasy game to myself, after an incredulous multi-part feature on Final Fantasy XIII-3: Lightning Returns. Remember when these games ended after identifying a clear bad guy and casting Meteor on them enough times?

Zero Hour

The most disarming thing about Type-0 is how it sets up a world very familiar to Final Fantasy players. The world of Orience is controlled by four nations: The Rubrum Dominion, the Militesi Empire, the Lorican Alliance and the Kingdom of Concordia. The names were deliberately chosen so you'd understand that whenever someone said "the kingdom", for example, they were referring to Concordia, or to Rubrum when they mentioned "the dominion". Each of these nations has a crystal, which not only protects their particular domain but is more or less the cornerstone of their technology, philosophy and culture. Concordia's crystal, for instance, also belongs to a nearby race of intelligent dragons and so Concordia's military is largely comprised of dragons and dragon riders and they're generally chill long-lived folk in touch with nature akin to Tolkien's elves (but a lot shorter for some reason). Rubrum's crystal allows its citizens to use magic and summon eidolons (the ever-present Final Fantasy nuke button), while Militesi's crystal produces a type of electricity which allows them to create and empower various technological wonders like Magitek Armor mechs and airplanes and bombs and other modern tech for civilian and military use. These crystals are all themed around the four symbols of Chinese mythology, which show up a lot in Japanese pop culture: Byakko, the White Tiger of the West (Militesi); Suzaku, the Vermillion Bird of the South (Rubrum); Seiryu, the Azure Dragon of the East (Concordia); and Genbu, the Black Tortoise of the North (Lorica).

The whole "building domains around elemental crystals" conceit is a holdover from Final Fantasy IV, while the idea of a kingdom that predominantly trains and rides dragons as its core military wing is more a nod to Final Fantasy V's Kingdom of Tycoon. An Empire that has an overpowering technological advantage over the lands it aims to conquer has been a recurring Final Fantasy trope as far as back as Final Fantasy II, though most of us are more familiar with the Gestahlian Empire of Final Fantasy VI, the Shinra Corporation (a more contemporary spin on a global superpower) of Final Fantasy VII and the Galbadians of Final Fantasy VIII. Armies that predominantly rely on technology fighting armies that predominantly rely on magic is a big Final Fantasy mainstay too, seen most keenly in Final Fantasies IX and X as well as the above. Type-0 doesn't shy away from recalling tropes from previous Final Fantasies and, as I discussed in a piece that went up last week, it almost relies on that familiarity to help ground its otherwise out-there plot twists.

Type-0's plot specifically revolves around "Class Zero"; a paramilitary group of twelve teenagers (later expanded to fourteen) that comprise one of several classes of Rubrum's capital of Akademia, specifically its same-named academic facility. Because Rubrum's military is so dependent on magic, and magic comes more naturally to the young than the old - it's explained that, like many sensory-based talents, you lose the knack for it with age - the magical students of this university also constitute a significant amount of Rubrum's military might. Rubrum is all but conquered by Militesi in the opening hours of the game, having been pushed back to the capital city by the sudden and enormous momentum of the Empire's mechanical forces, but the cadets of Akademia become instrumental in changing the tide of war just before Rubrum loses its capital city to a magical-jamming device. That's in a large part due to Class Zero, whose magic is mysteriously immune to the effects of the magical-jammer and are able to destroy it, bolstering the rest of the Rubrum military into staging a comeback. This intro raises some questions about the nature of Class Zero's powers and their patron Dr. Arecia Al-Rashia the Archsorceress, whom the entirety of Class Zero refer to as "Mother".

Despite the fact that Class Zero are the protagonists and you're introduced to three of them in the opening tutorial mission, and the rest shortly thereafter, there's some early detachment between them and the player. Secrets kept from the player for a long time involve Class Zero's relationship to their "mother", the nature of their magical abilities, their power over "phantoma" which is drawn from deceased enemies and used for spell upgrading and customization, and their place in the hierarchy of the rest of the school and the military. Class Zero are officially enrolled in Akademia at the start of the game, but they were raised and educated in an external facility governed by Dr. Al-Rashia and as a result many of the other students treat them with a mix of awe and apprehension. They're grateful that Class Zero more or less saved the entire dominion of Rubrum at the eleventh hour, but don't quite trust them due to their outsider status and the classified information behind how they're able to do the things they do. Because the game even hides this information from the player, at least initially, it has them acclimate to this mysterious squad of misfits via the new Class Zero transfers Machina and Rem, two talented but otherwise conventional students at the academy that work well as player ciphers.

One more slightly melodramatic facet about the world of Orience is that the crystals will magically erase the memories of the deceased. Ostensibly, this is so soldiers can continue fighting without the distracting negative effects or demoralization that comes from mourning those that have fallen. This becomes a significant element of Machina's plotline, as his brother dies shortly into the game's intro and he becomes determined to find out why, despite not remembering anything about him. It also speaks to the game's emotional intelligence that it has to spend so long convincing the player that remembering the dead is perhaps a good thing. I suppose that sentiment has a more profound effect on a country that frequently tries to forget its involvement with the last great war.

From Zero to Hero

The majority of the game's missions revolve around Rubrum's push to take back all its territory from Militesi, often involving Class Zero infiltrating a vital tactical location while the orthodox armies run distraction, or Class Zero assisting the armies directly with RTS-style missions (which actually feel more like dumbed down MOBAs, since you're helping automatically-controlled allied troops take locations by whittling down the enemies in their path).

While the player is doing this, the war continues on various other fronts both military and political. The Lorican Alliance is eradicated entirely by an "Ultima Bomb" that leaves an enormous crater on the world map where the Lorican territories once stood, because Japan loves overt allusions to the misguided application of grotesquely powerful weapons of mass destruction. Concordia initially joins Rubrum in helping to repel the Militesi in the same nominal, standoffish manner that the US did in the early stages of the two World Wars, offering volunteer troops and resource support but generally staying out of the way. At the game's mid-point, Concordia attempts to enact a peace treaty based on a historical pact between the four nations, which inevitably results in the assassination of their Queen and the blame placed on Rubrum and on Class Zero in particular - the Empire hoping to install a sympathetic monarch in the Queen's stead and vilify their greatest threat in the process - which then turns the war into a two-way battle with a united Concordia and Militesi on either side of a beleaguered Rubrum.

This is when Rubrum's big guns come out.

The game spends a long time teasing the wild card presence of the "l'Cie", a holdover from the Final Fantasy XIII universe. As in those games, an l'Cie is a mortal chosen by their nation's crystal to complete some divine task for its sake, taking on the immortality and incredible power that comes with being the crystal's agent and guardian. Each nation's crystal has a handful of l'Cie, and most are highly independent and are left alone by the governments of those nations - they're much more interested in completing their Focus, as these tasks are called, than getting involved with the meager political struggles of their countries. The war threatens the crystals directly, however, so most of the l'Cie are drafted in and used to counteract the l'Cie of the enemy. One such early encounter between two l'Cie manages to vaporize a fortress the player just spent a good hour or so attempting to liberate, and another encounter sees a cloudy sky completely frozen solid by Concordia's draconic l'Cie, forcing the Rubrum military to disembark their now trapped airships and fight on the solidified clouds. Whenever the player is forced to fight one of the enemy l'Cie, they invariably lose; the only way to succeed is to survive long enough until something calls the l'Cie away, or otherwise flee. (Or, if you're on new game plus and several dozen levels stronger, stand your ground and get some dang payback.)

Rubrum's ace in the hole, however, are its Eidolons. Eidolons are depicted as they usually are in Final Fantasy; deities and other mighty creatures temporarily summoned from another plane of existence by a particularly powerful mage. However, each summon requires the life force of the summoner - this means that the Eidolon Corps tends to include a lot of short-lived mages and students. With the majority of the Rubrum forces attempting to wipe out the Concordian front, the remainder placed along the Militesi border are soon overwhelmed. This leads to the strongest Rubrum l'Cie, Lady Caetuna, and a whole class of summoners sacrificing themselves to summon one of the "Verboten Eidolons", in this case Alexander. If you've played Final Fantasy IX, you probably know what kind of effect summoning a mountain-sized mecha packed with lasers and missiles might have. Alexander completely annihilates the Militesi vanguard, leaving a hundred-mile scar in the land where their forces once stood, which greatly demoralizes the remainder of the Militesi army just as Rubrum manage to deter the Concordian offensive. With both nations reeling from the power of Eidolons, Rubrum quickly conquers the two with desperate coordinated attacks on their capitals. War won.

Zero Out

This is when the plot goes way off the rails. At several points when discussing the repercussions of the war and the possibility of a Militesi total victory, the students talk about Tempus Finis - a prophesized end of the world scenario that is meant to occur when the balance of the crystals is so off-kilter that one manages to dominate the other three. The game doesn't put too much narrative emphasis on this situation in the core story progression, however, and were it not the sort of predictable video game end-point you'd probably think nothing of it actually happening. Tempus Finis does indeed occur after the war is won, and the immediate consequences are dire: the sky turns red, the seas turn black and eerie humanoid creatures called the Rursus start appearing across the world, murdering every living creature in sight. The Rursus, like Class Zero, are able to damage and draw out phantoma directly, which the game had only recently revealed to be the life essence, or souls, of living beings. Anyone struck by a Rursus weapon either suffers lasting damage to their life essence that cannot be healed, or is simply killed outright. In addition, the Rursus will constantly come back to life regardless of the damage done to them, as their phantoma are strong enough to regenerate from any injury. They quickly overwhelm the remaining Rubrum units, even eliminating the powerful Rubrum l'Cie Lord Zhuyu. It is revealed that Class Zero wasn't just conditioned from an early age to effectively fight Rubrum's battles, but to fight the Rursus should Tempus Finis ever happen by using their own phantoma-drawing methods against them.

The final chapter of the game sees almost the entire staff faculty and student base of Akademia reduced to corpses and rubble, including the vast majority of the named NPCs, and Class Zero are taken to where the leader of the Rursus, the Rursan Arbiter, is waiting for the being known as Agito to show up. Agito is another poorly-explained facet of the game's world - a mythical entity that a chosen human being will evolve into with enough dedication, which is also the final goal of every student at Akademia. To become Agito is to become divine, to have the magical power to shape reality as they see fit, and to enter an unknown realm adjacent to that of the world where the creation gods are thought to lie (or maybe some fantastic treasure, at least). The four crystals brand their l'Cie in the hopes that they become Agito, or facilitate the emergence of same, and the ominous shrine-like location of the Rursan Arbiter - Pandaemonium, another recurring final dungeon in the series - can be only be accessed by l'Cie for this reason.

If this all sounds confusing and chaotic, I think it's meant to be to some extent. It's like the equivalent of Ragnarok or the Biblical Armageddon happening today, and almost no-one having any idea about what is happening, how it could be averted or how they might even survive it. The game has some in-world lore about Tempus Finis and the rules that govern it, but the particulars are only known to a select few scholars and the rest simply know of it by reputation, where it's more a fearful religious event meant to spook them and keep them in check. This is, of course, a massive departure from the far more conventional warfare the game has contented itself with up until this point, and simply involves Class Zero travelling from the ruins of Akademia to Pandaemonium to face their destiny.

A few more tidbits before we discuss the final dungeon: Until now, Class Zero had been saved by the occasional deus ex machina of Dr. Al-Rashia, either through the unique and hideously powerful Eidolon she commands - Bahamut ZERO, making a welcome return from Final Fantasy VII - or through her own life-giving magic. Dr. Al-Rashia also gives them Life Armlets on their first sortie, which endlessly cast Re-Raise so that players don't get ganked during the tutorial, and has been helping them whenever possible albeit in an indirect manner. Machina and Rem, meanwhile, have been embroiled in an utterly ridiculous dramatic arc right out of a very special Degrassi High episode that eventually culminates with them both becoming l'Cie in secret to protect the other. Unfortunately, Machina was coerced into becoming an l'Cie of the Militesi's crystal, the White Tiger, and uses a mask to disguise this fact from the other Rubrum students. He ends up accidentally killing the new Rubrum l'Cie, Rem, and chooses to crystallize early - the ultimate fate of any l'Cie after their Focus has been completed - with her preserved eternally in his arms.

When Class Zero reaches Pandaemonium, they discover the missing instigator for the entire war - Marshall Cid Aulstyne, the ruler of the Militesi Empire - has already entered the Rursan Arbiter's court to become Agito. Cid then punishes Class Zero with a series of difficult challenges, eventually deciding to simply murder them all once he grows bored enough. They're saved at the last second by the l'Cie Machina and Rem, who have somehow figured out a way to assist Class Zero from beyond the gave in Al-Rashia's stead, and empower them enough to destroy the Rursan Arbiter, who is also Cid Aulstyne somehow, and save the world from total extinction. Drawing the Rursan Arbiter's phantoma, the only effective way to destroy him, turns out to be fatal, however. Class Zero then returns to their home room in Akademia worse for the wear and, without exception, succumb to their injuries. When Machina and Rem are magically brought back to life by a grateful Al-Rashia for their part in Class Zero's success, they find all fourteen bodies of their former classmates peacefully slumped under a Rubrum military standard. However, the effect of the averted Tempus Finis means that the dead can be remembered again, and Machina and Rem ensure that Class Zero are honored forever more as the heroes that saved the world.

A Zero-Summation Game

Things are never quite as they seem, of course, and I think Type-0 manages to pip Metal Gear Solid V in the convoluted behind-the-scenes, post-game exposition dump stakes. Dr. Al-Rashia is, of course, not a human being. Rather, she's one of several divine agents hoping to create Agito. Agito is the only means to open the passageway between the mortal world and the unknown realm, which she and others of her kind are very interested in reaching in some way for unknown reasons. Her particular method is by empowering certain humans with the power of the Rursus, and in doing so giving them a fighting chance to reach Pandaemonium and become Agito. Her opposite, a mysterious masked man known as Gala, triggers Tempus Finis and finds a worthy vessel for the Rursan Arbiter, and then through them commands the Rursus to exterminate all life in order to use that enormous influx of souls/phantoma to open the gates to the unknown realm through sheer force (there's a similar scheme concocted by the Terran administrator Garland in Final Fantasy IX too, and Gala almost resembles him).

It's also revealed that when Cid reached Gala in the center of Pandaemonium, he was instead aghast at what Gala intended to do and ended his own life in defiance to Gala's plans, which unfortunately did not stop Gala from possessing his shell for the Arbiter and enact the genocide regardless. Turns out Cid's plans to conquer the world were really intended to weaken the arbitrary rule of the crystals and ensure humanity would govern itself, due to his mistrust of inscrutable higher powers pulling the strings of destiny. Instead, his body becomes a literal puppet of the Gods in a gruesome ironic twist.

Two other hooded students, revealed to be "defect" Class Zero members, reveal to Al-Rashia that this cycle has succeeded where so many others have failed before. Al-Rashia is poised to begin the cycle anew, allowing the four nations to be restored to their "factory settings", as in every previous cycle Class Zero had chosen to become l'Cie to fight the Rursan Arbiter and lose their advantage in the process. By instead choosing to remain mortal in this particular timeline, Class Zero are slain but eliminate the Arbiter in the process. Al-Rashia decides to let this timeline continue instead, resurrecting Machina and Rem from their crystalline tomb to ensure her "children" are honored as the heroes they are before swanning off to do whatever it is immortal divinities do when they're forced to rethink some plans.

We're then left with a whole heap of questions. Whatever happened to the plan to create Agito? What's the deal with the other realm, and why does Al-Rashia and Gala want to open its doorway so strongly? Is Al-Rashia rewinding time to avert the total extinction of all life on Orience, or is it just to spite Gala and his more direct solution? If there truly has been six hundred million cycles, why did it take this long for Class Zero to reject becoming l'Cie? Is the reason why the entirety of Class Zero have names that are numbers on playing cards because Al-Rashia got tired of coming up with anything more inventive after that many cycles? What would happen if Militesi or Concordia or Lorica won instead of Rubrum and/or Class Zero were killed in combat, or would that get rewound too? Where the hell did all the faculty heads disappear off to when the Rursus showed up? Why are the Rursus so terrifying? (I think I know this one - because they're the monsters that show up at the end of the world to kill everyone. Doy.)

The thing about Type-0's structure is that you're meant to start over with higher level characters going on higher level versions of the old missions and taking on the "Expert Trials", which are optional missions that were too high level for a party on their first playthrough. This expansion of content would no doubt be accompanied by an expansion of lore to be gleaned from various new sources, which would help explain this otherwise inexplicable final act of the game and fill in a lot of important plot details after the fact. You might even be in a situation where you completely ignored all this optional story stuff and become motivated to dig it up in a subsequent playthrough to make sense of what you just saw. For that reason, I'm not sure whether to fault or praise the game for its Byzantine narrative, because it seems like it was deliberately put on the periphery for the sake of players who want something a little more hands-off and mechanical. On the other hand, this sort of clemency perhaps exonerates too much of the game's poor and overly abstract JRPG storytelling, and doesn't at all excuse the weepy melodrama of Rem's incurable disease or Machina's angsty tantrums.

As I'm sure ZombiePie would attest if he hadn't already bounced from this article due to its copious amount of spoilers, you can always depend on a Final Fantasy plot to leave you confused, irritated and intrigued in equal measure.