Eudemic
Moderator
Your Local Sword-Fighter
Posts: 302
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Post by Eudemic on Sept 4, 2007 11:36:51 GMT
Some of you might remember a discussion we had on RoER1 a while back about how the equator of Gaia lays on the map, and how we somehow came to the conculsion that it crossed from the lower-left corner to the upper right.
I just wanted to say that I think I found some actual in-game evidence of this.
At some point after you leave the Evil Forest Zidane makes a statement which implies that the North Gate is more or less north of the party's location, when as it appears on the map the Gate is closer to due west.
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Post by Declan Tribal on Sept 4, 2007 21:19:14 GMT
I'm under the impression that Gaia doesn't have an equator, in the traditional sense. Remember that there are four continents that are about the same size as Antarctica; one ice, two desert and one mountainous/forest/tundra/whatever. If there was a proper equator, we'd have more desert regions and another ice cap to contend with. As it stands, there isn't.
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Post by daimaoumyutsuu on Sept 5, 2007 1:54:00 GMT
Because of the climate and geography, an equator drawn on the map would raise problems that Alexis just pointed out. That's why I think the Gaia we see on the map only represents a fraction of the actual surface area of Gaia, with a good 40% to 50% of the planet's surface being omitted because it is only water that is redundant to the game. If this is true, it would mean the planet is larger that it looks, and would explain the earth-like gravity.
The world is super-deformed, so the cartography is more dubious.
Remember, until satellites mapped the earth, cartographic projections distorted the earth geography. According to some projections, Antarctica is bigger than all of Asia and Europe combined, but on other projections, Antarctica is only as large as North America.
With cartographic projections prone to distortion, then to calculate the infantile proportions into everything we see in the game, it could very well be that the distance between continents is significantly reduced and warped. That is, the Mist Continent may in fact lie between 30 and 60 degrees south (temperate), even if it appears that the map would make it sit between 10 and 40 degrees south (tropics).
Note how the Salvage Archipelago imitates tropical conditions. On earth, archipelagos tend to exist less than 50 degrees in either direction. Also, Chocobo Lagoon appears more tropical than other places. Tropical shallow waters tend to be clear, even when it's the same body of water that is opaque and murky when its shallows are nearer to the poles. This would indicate Chocobo Lagoon is closer to the tropics than any continent.
FF9's world map is the weirdest, I think. Usually, an FF game sticks the map to the same general layout: arctic on top, desert/tropics (if any) at the bottom. If desert/tropics isn't at the bottom, it's at the center, with a clear distinction of temperate at either above and below. But FF9 sticks the arctic exclusively at the upper left corner, and opposite that continent is a desert land, which obviously is not cold despite being at the same apparent latitude. If any FF map is crazier, FF12 is pure insanity.
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