Softly spoken ne’er do wells clashing, as sovereignty bleeds under stormy skies. Final Fantasy Tactics War of the Lions is a story about us. Which is to say that it is a story about a uniquely human history, a retelling of the classically questionable practices we are apt to find ourselves bound to by convention, rather than by pragmatism or any principled stance. As with so many wars, much of what is started is a result of the unique human condition, the poor and the strong, the culling of those who cannot defend themselves from the ravages wrought by warlords past.
The uniquely human condition here is pursuance, vaguely followed by flight. A constant series of events occur where you, an unknown hero, are tasked with being part of a history unintentionally. But such a history is one skewed even in the imaginary, as history is continuously written by the conquerors, rarely by the conquered. Suffering then is almost a part of the daily life of those without noble distinction, an imaginary analog pulled straight from history itself, where privileged individuals hide the truth of the past with an obfuscated present. The poor, the conquered may not know of history, but they have a long view when they have been slighted.
The story thus poses a question to us at all times, one largely in relation to what determines history, what determines the political rightness of the situation we come to live in, and who it is that ultimately determines much of the future by formatting the past. In academia, it is often said that what we are able to think is almost entirely a framework of what has been written. We are thus influenced by those in the past, and must take responsibility for their decisions regardless of whether or not we appreciate the decisions made. The situations we are born into are not of our making, clearly, but they have a real effect on our lives, one we cannot ignore, and one many refuse to.
Final Fantasy Tactics is a story of the history of those who refused to ignore their situation. A story of the discontents who made decisions for what they believed in, and those decisions were almost always influenced by the ones around them as much as the history which made them. The sadness of losing a loved one, the agony of torture, the feeling of worthlessness at one’s inability to change the real problems, ones people who are reading this have likely never had to endure. To know, or have an idea, of what it’s like to not eat, with full knowledge that many will go to sleep with full bellies. At least in part, this is the story recounted here, and though many of the ideas hit home, the suffering is sadly unlikely to change, a spiral of human greed and foolishness.
Recommended: Yes