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Post by Robshi on Apr 28, 2007 21:42:00 GMT
Only when you're flying high enough over it. Go down lower and it starts raining. This is strange as the game doesn't show any clouds.
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Post by ajcrescent on Apr 29, 2007 0:02:49 GMT
No, you're thinking of Disc 4. Trust me, I've played through the game literally 20 times.
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Post by Robshi on Apr 29, 2007 9:45:35 GMT
I'll have to test that out when I play the game again. Yet I think that is Square being neglectful seeing as it will still be raining if you actually enter Burmecia.
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Eudemic
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Post by Eudemic on Apr 30, 2007 17:43:26 GMT
There are three "rouge" palaces on Gaia (I'm counting Alexandria Castle based on previous discussions with Oni), none of which are explained. It's entirely possible that Kuja took up residence in the Desert Palace and then modified it to suit his needs.
The Burmecians have been around for 500+ years. The Mist came about after Garland began his efforts, but I can't remember when that was. . .
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Post by LancerZero on Apr 30, 2007 18:39:43 GMT
I don't remember if they even said exactly when the Mist came. Oni brings up a very interesting point: what exactly DOES the Mist do to people, and why were the nezumi able to build Burmecia right down in it? I don't really have an opinion on this subject, as it's one I've simply avoided. I'm lazy like that. XP Could it be that one of their ancient dances protects against the effects of the Mist? Or were they, as Oni suggested might be the case, transformed BY the Mist sometime in their distance past into their current forms? Or, similarly, are they essentially a civilization of highly evolved monsters? (all remarks about how monstrous humans can be aside! XD) On a sidenote, a personal spelling pet peeve of mine, and a mistake I see surprisingly often: " rouge" and " rogue" are two very similar words that're pronounced very differently, and mean very different things. Of course, I'm probably just more cognisant of this because I took French in HS. =P
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Post by Robshi on Apr 30, 2007 19:07:17 GMT
I'd be more inclined to think that they have a dance to protect against the mist's effects. You don't see any mist inside Burmecia do you? No, only rain.
Besides, there's loads of demi-humans in Gaia, some in places like Alexandria which are well away from the mist. I doubt the Burmecians would be evolved monsters if the demi-humans came about through other means.
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Post by daimaoumyutsuu on Apr 30, 2007 23:19:47 GMT
For dating purposes, we know of one lineage with a tangible amount of generations: Cid. The current Cid is the 9th, which means 8 previous Cids existed. How do we count the years of this lineage? Suppose we count Cid apart from birth, and assume the average age of parenthood is 20. If the current Cid is about 50 years old, and he's childless, then we go back 50 years to when his father was 20; the total time is now 70 years. From Cid the 8th, go back another 20 years to Cid XII, then another 20 years for Cid XI, and so on. This gives us a minimum 210 years of the Cid lineage. If the Cids lived longer, it stretches out the time. If there were more generations that did not use the name Cid, it also stretches the time.
How is this relevant? Among several, there is one point I will say for now. Well, We are told the first Cid founded Lindblum. This makes Lindblum the youngest city of the continent. If you pay close attention, you see that Lindblum is built up from a mountain. Little of the city is permanent, disaster-resistant construction. Alexandria shows an older construction, that of heavy masonry typical of a dark age castle. Furthermore, we know Alexandria is founded upon Alexander, whose body remained since his only summoning against what we assume is Garland. Treno we know is old as well, its structures more ruin-like than recent.
Burmecia looks even more ancient. All of the construction is stone and concrete. Obviously this is a true permanent settlement. Stone construction is very expensive to establish, but very long-lasting. When they built Burmecia, they knew they were to live there forever. They also had to have strong resource (money, labor, etc.) backing to afford the construction at all. Given the spectacular evacuation plan from the story's events, they were the most attached to their capital, much more attached than Alexandrians with their city. That sort of obstinance to leave comes over deep time, thousands of years instead of hundreds of years. How do you know that stubborn attachment to land comes over extreme time? Look at the middle east, quite possibly the worst place to live on the planet, and humans insisted on living there for 5000 years. Then give them the thought that maybe another people deserve to live there, and they get rabid. They're violently militant over sand. This is irrational attachment to land, and Burmecians having demonstrated this, they too must have held their land for millenia.
The Burmecian statues barely resemble Burmecians beyond simply being ratlike. This could be either bad or primitive art, indicative of an older morphology, or weather-wear. Either way, significant time passed on these stone statues. Rock can wear down, but it's still ROCK. It takes almost geological time to wear down rock. They would know what weather resistant rock to use for statues if they were already smart enough to build with stone.
If you also figure in the very rugged culture of Burmecia, you're looking at a people that overcame countless obstacles over a long time. Finally, it's implied that Burmecia is in a wane of its civilization, that the manpower was not as sturdy as commonly believed. A wane in civilization means significant time passed where the country encounters maintenance issues. This is similar to Russia and China, where long periods of homogenous government weather out to make way for modern governments. Of course, those two countries underwent the process many times. A one-time process is visible in the US, the dominant power of the 20th and 21st centuries, but not enduring enough for the 22nd century.
To give a clear view of what I'm saying is a comparison of culture like this: Lindblum = 500 years Alexandria = 1000 years Burmecia = 2000 years
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Post by Deleted on May 3, 2007 9:26:26 GMT
I was thinking about the theories of evolution, and maybe everything came from one single called organism, but evolved differently. I remember hearing somewhere along the line we used to be rat-like creatures; maybe the Burmecians evolved differently at this stage.
Then I think, hey, it's a FANTASY game. None of it has to make complete sense! ^_^
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Eudemic
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Post by Eudemic on May 3, 2007 16:41:37 GMT
I think that Treno may have once been its own Kingdom/Principality/Duchy, but was then conquered by Alexandria (resulting in it's ruined apperance.)
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Post by Robshi on May 3, 2007 17:03:15 GMT
That's a fair point Eud, but I think the ruined areas are mainly the poorer areas of Treno. Either they weren't rebuilded properly after Alexandria conquered Treno, or they've always been in disrepair.
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Post by daimaoumyutsuu on May 4, 2007 3:54:14 GMT
The evolution thing is always feasible. I won't be a stickler for names now, but "rodents" were the first clade of true mammals, and that same stock that brought rodents also led to primates. There is more genes in common between a rat and a human than a human and a tiger. To suggest that Gaia followed a similar start, but rodents having a branching as the primates did seems pretty fine to say. My only caveat is that it discusses true natural history (4 billion years of evolution) for Gaia rather than a more fantastic origin (everything recent came from creations made by the supernatural in only millions of years or less). Yes, you read right, I am more likely to go with magical shortcut of evolution on Gaia than a realistic natural history. There are times when something, like Burmecian biology/morphology, is too engineered to have evolved. Granted, the feeling is largely because Burmecians as a race are designed for this game.
Treno is also inundated. Only the old stone construction is well-designed to the water, while newer wooden buildings are simply elevated. The layout doesn't look planned as a habitated city, and more planned as a site of other function, like a chess set. The established nobility is unique to Treno. Nobility is not a short term institute, it takes centuries to fashion a nobility, and clearly Treno has served as the original home of nobles. That isn't much, but I think it would date Treno to 100s of years rather than decades. Heavy war damage, I think, would mislead to excessive (1000+ years) dates, but not corrupt modest dates (200-500 years). I'm quite tired to really debate Treno like this, so don't be surprised if what I said of Treno is poopy.
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Post by Deleted on May 4, 2007 9:26:14 GMT
You know, maybe if it's a fantasy game, it doesn't have to have any logic in it -_-'
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Post by Robshi on May 4, 2007 11:20:53 GMT
No, a game with no logic whatsoever is an insanity game, something I'm sure you excel at...
FF9 has logic, but Square doesn't give much references to the history of Gaia. You have to really look hard for them and even then you don't have that much to work with. I guess a lot of Gaia's history can be a personal choice and a great setting for fanfiction.
I haven't written fanfiction in a looong time.
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Post by Deleted on May 5, 2007 11:34:33 GMT
I'll take that first remark as a compliment >_>
I can think of many games that arent very logical and they are not insanity games. The fantasy genre is about made up worlds and magical things and different races and that sort of thing.
I really don't see why we're discussing things in the first place. I mean, I don't try to make sense of things I see, I go with the flow.
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Post by daimaoumyutsuu on May 6, 2007 6:57:00 GMT
The biggest reason to make sense out of these things is to be able to make sense when writing fanfiction.
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Post by Robshi on May 6, 2007 11:34:44 GMT
Exactly right Oni, although as you and I and any other author has proved, my version of Gaia is a lot different to yours.
And as this topic started about rain, guess what I can see outside! I guess my experience in watching and getting caught in rain proved useful when writing about events in Burmecia.
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Post by Deleted on May 7, 2007 11:16:06 GMT
Really? We have had nil rain for ages...hello second hosepipe ban -_-'
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Eudemic
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Post by Eudemic on May 7, 2007 17:36:31 GMT
No one will make you discuss this with us, so you're free to refrain from doing so at your leisure.
Aside from them being fictional characters in a game, Oni, why do you think they seem engineered?
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Post by LancerZero on May 7, 2007 17:38:15 GMT
We discuss these things, Mel, because we are total nerds. XD Yes, it is fantasy; no, it doesn't have to make total sense, not even in the context of fanfiction (much of which makes no sense anyway - lemons! D= ). But at the same time, for the sake of detail, some of us find it fun to debate the finer points that aren't really made clear in the game itself. So allow us our fun, eh? ^^
As for city age and construction . . . hmm. Treno appears to me to be an almost haphazard city, cobbled together bit by mismatched bit. And yet, in spite of that, it's still termed the city of nobles. I have to agree with Oni that the place is probably quite old, possibly even originally a kingdom in itself. It seems almost like an old castle, where people have built wooden structures and scaffolding across what once was a courtyard or something . . . it's a fairly mixed-up looking place.
I also agree that Alexandria must be quite old; for one thing, they seem to have some fairly extensive cisterns. And if that river's been there for any length of time, it would make a natural place for people to settle. I'd suggest that the city of Alexandria is likely even older than the kingdom, or nation, that bears its name.
Burmecia, too; erecting stone structures is no easy feat, especially with Burmecia's weather! XD They must have built the place long, long ago (or began to build it). I do wonder why they never tunneled through the mountains there to make a seaport, though - the Alexandrians and the people of Lindblum (Lindblumites? Lindblumers? =\ ) tunneled down and through, which would seem to me to be a more difficult task than tunneling straight through.
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Post by daimaoumyutsuu on May 10, 2007 3:35:28 GMT
This time I'm talking out of my... just to let you know in advance. It's my opinion this time, not so much game fact like my previous posts.
Well, as to why I said "engineered," the Burmecian anatomy has little room to extrapolate natural evolution. As much as I want it to appear a trick of angle and lighting, I fear that there is no way around the fact that the Burmecian skull is still too cramped for a cranial size that allow fully modern, human-level sentience. This applies to anthropomorphs in general (listen up, furries). If you look at the skull of any non-human, most of it is dedicated to jaw muscle, not brain size. The entire cranium would have to be much larger than a human's to accomodate jaw muscles and large brain size. The only alternative is a super-efficient brain mass, where even if the brain is small, there is enough folds and synapse surface area to make up for the loss of overall volume. In layman's terms, it's like comparing a lawnmower radiator to a bowling ball and asking what is a better model to lose heat.
The problem with this compact-efficient alternative is, it is not that natural an evolutionary path to occur. It's already insane how we humans managed to get our brains this well developed, and that's just it, you can't find such a trend in any species other than the lineage that led right up to us. The closest non-apes have is dolphins, a water-cooled species smaller than us, and elephants, a much larger species that probably got its memory from being so darn big even on the hot savannah. Rats are slightly different, they generate fast enough that evolution is noticeable in our lifetimes. Beyond that, animals don't have capacity beyond their niche.
Back to my original complaint, anthropomorphs (artwork observation only, not a bashing of it) tend to ignore brain size requirements for human-level sentience in order to look more aesthetically pleasing. Frankly, copying and pasting a doberman's head in place of your own head is not going to result in a sentient creature. An exceptional anthropomorph would be Star Fox, even with cartoon superdeformation, his head is still quite large. It's this very artistic preference that is the rule that I said Burmecians seem engineered, because anything scientific we have to work with cannot explain it, it falls into fantasy. Go ahead, laugh, I'm not ashamed to admit I find a barrier even my nerdy self won't explain away with realism. I tried before, and it never got off the ground, so I'm giving it up.
My fanfiction remark was cut for what it is, but I did not yet want to admit a secondary feeling of mine at the time. I haven't written actual fanfiction in quite a while, and I don't think I will anytime soon. However, analyzing the story, giving reasons for why things are the way they are in the game when the creator did not bother with it at all, to me that is fanfiction I can write, even it has a textbook dryness to it. Explaining how Burmecia ended up in the rainy state it is, it's a sort of fanfiction but done from a non-fiction perspective (yes, I don't like using that word like that either). It's like trekkies arguing over the mise-en-scene of a Star Trek episode, you know for sure they spent there time debating an episode instead of writing fanfiction. Sorry for using such a harsh comparison, but I think it got the point across.
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