Final Fantasy and Opposition in the Face of Oppression

Taylor Rioux
3 days ago
10 min read

The Reins of History

Disclaimer: This article contains heavy spoilers for the following Final Fantasy Titles: VI, VII, X, XII, XIII, XVI, and Tactics

I’ve been thinking about the Final Fantasy series a lot lately. Those thoughts have largely avoided analysis of the gameplay systems or the controversial direction of the series. Instead, my mind has turned to the stories they told and the lessons they taught me from a young age.

On its face, Final Fantasy may seem like a series of completely disconnected entries, with few shared messages, stories, or even iconography. Yet, Final Fantasy has always held one consistent throughline: those who aim to oppress the downtrodden are evil and must be opposed.

How each title presents these stories of resistance differs, with some focusing more heavily on government and church overreach, while others highlight systems of oppression like slavery and the impacts of such violations on the psyche of its people. Each circumstance is unique, but they all feature an overbearing ruling class that uses force to stifle and control the people they lord over.

Though many of the games eventually morph into fighting a god-like entity, those entities themselves represent or run the systems of oppression being enforced on the populace. They function as stand-ins for the specific type of corruption that has been perpetuated throughout the story. Sin in Final Fantasy X is more than just a big monster; it is the embodiment of the church that has long abused its position of power to control the people of Spira. In Final Fantasy VII, Sephiroth is the personification of Shinra’s hubris. Not only is he the product of their scientific experiments, but the circumstances that led to his disillusionment were entirely of Shinra’s own making.

A person in red observes a section of a city on fire through a glass window in a dim industrial setting, with large cylindrical structures can be seen in the distance.

President Shinra overlooks the fallen plate of Sector 7.

Image Credits: Square Enix

As a Minnesotan, I can’t help but see the parallels between these stories I grew up on and the actions of the US government and agencies like ICE in Minneapolis. Masked secret police that hunt down dissenters, even peaceful ones, murdering anyone who dares to try and hold them to account. Roving gangs of state enforcers who target the downtrodden in an effort to eliminate the “others” and build their supremacist project, with no care for the collateral damage that ensues.

The methods used to justify this violence are also eerily familiar. For instance, when Cloud and the AVALANCHE team destroyed a mako reactor in Final Fantasy VII, the Shinra Corporation sent their own secret police (the Turks) to squash AVALANCHE, dropping the Sector 7 plate on the slums below. After the fact, Shinra blames the attack on AVALANCHE, citing their status as a terrorist cell. A tactic also employed by our government, despite evidence to the contrary.

This cycle of state violence is further enabled by the legal protections that shield those in power. In Final Fantasy XII, the Archadian Judges enjoy such immunity. Much like the ICE agents in the USA, these judges wear helms that conceal their true faces, sheltering them from observation and accountability. They serve as the guardians of ‘law and order’ within the Archadian Empire, enjoying full immunity from any repercussions of their actions, and they may designate anyone they wish as an enemy of the state and punish them accordingly. The Archadian Empire itself is a project in racial supremacy, only employing Humes outside of extreme circumstances — a fact the judges are all too keen to uphold.

Of course, this type of oppression and abuse is not new to people of color in the USA. State violence has long been a method of control. Black Americans are incarcerated en masse for petty crimes, jailed at nearly six times the rate of White Americans, and despite comprising only about 13% of the population, they make up nearly 40% of the prison population.

Hispanic people are kidnapped, beaten, and forced into concentration camps, and people detained by ICE are taken on “starlight tours” where they are driven and dropped off in adverse conditions far from civilization. Their capture has been facilitated in many ways by the reintroduction of racial profiling as a legal justification for “reasonable suspicion”. These newly minted “Kavanugh Stops” allow ICE and Border Patrol agents to target and detain people based on their skin color, accent, and even occupation.

These are all happening today. They’re not relics of a distant past, and all are done at the hands of local, state, and federal forces.

TODAY coverage of George Floyd Protests.

However, some recent events, such as the 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, have galvanized large segments of the citizenry to question police involvement.

The fact that the current government occupation is taking place in the same city where George Floyd was murdered is not lost on me, but things have meaningfully changed since those protests in Minneapolis. Police-caused deaths have diminished greatly, with no killings by law enforcement officers in the entire state in over two full years, and zero Minneapolis Police Department shootings. There was a real sense that things were getting better, and despite what the Trump administration would have you believe, crime is down across the board.

And while the recent ICE occupations in LA, Chicago, and beyond have all been done under the pretence of “immigration enforcement”, it was inevitable that this violence would turn inward, used as a tool to harm the very citizens the government is meant to serve. Moments where the apparatus of “security” morphs into a tool of domestic oppression are present in the ideological manipulation found in Final Fantasy XIII, the territorial occupation and subsequent conscription in Final Fantasy XIV, and the hunting and exploitation of espers in Final Fantasy VI.

“Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.” — Robert O. Paxton, The Five Stages of Fascism

In Final Fantasy XIII, Cocoon is at odds with the planet Pulse. The threat of Pulse l’cie and Fal’cie looms over the people of Cocoon, who have been taught that Pulse and all of its people are evil — fears deliberately stoked by their ruling class. But Pulse is dead, the people of the planet long since removed. The truth of the matter is that the Cocoon Fal’cie want to see Cocoon destroyed, but cannot do so themselves. To this end, they brand the main party with a Pulse Fal’cie, turning them into the intended instrument of cocoon’s destruction.

Final Fantasy XIV’s Garlean Empire has been a driving oppositional force in the world of Eorzea for much of its run, and utilizes tactics that can be seen in the United States. The Empire captures a territory and conscripts its people into the military, forcing them to fight for the furtherance of the Empire’s aims. They come under the banner of liberation, with messages of freedom from the terrors of beastmen and magick. But in each and every conquered territory, the local population suffers, often at the hands of locals who have become useful tools for the Empire’s goals. Characters like Fordola, an Ala Mhigan who serves as commander of a particularly brutal imperial regiment, and Yotsuyu goe Brutus, a Doman woman who acts as viceroy and lives out her days tormenting her citizens, become useful for the Empire as avatars of terror.

In Final Fantasy VI, the main character Terra is a half-esper, making her part of a race of magical beings at odds with the Gestahlian Empire. The Empire hunts espers for their magical power, draining the living essence of these beings to fuel their Magitek machinery. I find similarities here to our treatment of migrant workers on our farms in the US, who are so often used, mistreated and discarded when it is politically convenient to do so.

But how much should that distinction of citizen and non-citizen matter? Would someone not born in the US have deserved such a fate? For all the assurances that Renee Good and Alex Pretti were both good people and American citizens, I can’t help but hear the distant implication that they would have deserved it if either of those facts were untrue. I implore you to consider this: we don’t need to adhere to DHS and ICE framing in our defense of lives, especially when they so often lie about who the people they detain are.

“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.” ― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

For many Americans, particularly middle-class white Americans, these infractions have been seen as minor incidents. It is easy enough to accept the story of officials when none of this is happening to you and yours. But now with the deaths of Renee Nicole Good, Alex Pretti, Parady La, Keith Porter, and more, the illusion of safety and “rule of law” is being shattered in real-time for millions of people.

Circling back to Final Fantasy VI, the major event that comes to mind is when Kefka finally realizes his aim of destroying the world of balance midway through the game. This moment signals the total collapse of the social fabric of the world and an end to civilization as it had been known up to that point. Normal no longer exists. Any sense of structure in the everyday lives of FFVI’s characters has been completely upended. It is in this moment that the survivors must find a new purpose, and they must band together to rebuild the world that was taken from them.

In Final Fantasy Tactics, the death of Delita’s sister Tietra at the hands of Ramza’s aristocratic allies forces a shift in his worldview. A proud noble by both birth and upbringing, Ramza must now contend with the injustices that have been (and continue to be) perpetuated by those he once called friends and family. He recognizes that those he previously associated with are using their status and wealth to harm those less fortunate so that they may be further enriched — a position he can no longer abide. He realizes that his title and appeals to honor cannot stop the violence of the state.

For many, the events in Minnesota are such a moment. It presents an unmistakable threat to the peace and safety that had at one time been assured. With this comes the realization that simply talking to the agents will not stop them. ICE agents did not have values of decency or any moral character when they joined the organization, and there certainly was no incentive to develop it post hoc. On top of this, Donald Trump and his appointees are not aiming to calm things down, either, telling us that such events are the consequences of our opposition to their cruelty. Appealing to their better nature will not save us; they must be opposed and confronted at every opportunity.

To that end, large-scale protests have been effective in galvanizing the populace; even the most sheltered among us take notice of the collective efforts of the people in the streets. As of writing, the “all” page of Reddit is almost entirely full of anti-ICE posts, across a wide range of hobbies and communities. YouTubers and Twitch streamers are speaking out, with some raising funds for local organizations to assist in protecting their communities.

CBS coverage of an anti-ICE protest.

But what does opposition look like in Final Fantasy, and what can we take from it for real-life application?

I think the best course of action lies in community. Final Fantasy XVI shows us a world full of slavery and discrimination. One in which the ‘others’ of the world are brought to heel through the use of a poison brand, and by extension, the threat of death should they disobey. Despite this, multiple different resistance cells arise. The main group, first helmed by Cid and later by Clive, forms an enclave (The Hideaway) to meet the needs of the disenfranchised, which is full of formerly branded members who have come together to create a community that supports itself through trading, farming, and other activities. Disparate groups throughout the world also take on the burden together. Martha’s rest serves as an allied outpost, smuggling branded slaves and working to fight the systems that endeavor to persecute magic users; in Northreach, Isabelle and her cadre of courtesans work to keep control of the city away from the Holy Empire of Sanbreque.

But resistance is not just about the physical networks we build, but also about the moral lines we refuse to cross. While Final Fantasy XVI focuses on survival through community, Final Fantasy XII challenges us to reject the very tools and methods of our oppressors.

One such moment is when Ashe is offered the power of the Sun-Cryst, a large piece of nethicite that has been used for centuries to control the people of Ivalice by providing magical power to those who hold its pieces. In this moment, Ashe is given the opportunity to take the Sun-Cryst and lay waste to the Archadian Empire, serving the goals of a shadowy cabal known as the Occuria. However, realizing that this arrangement leaves her indebted to the Occuria and that it also makes her little better than her own oppressors, she declines. She recognizes that you cannot liberate a people by using the same logic of domination that enslaved them. The power of the Dalmascan people is not in their magick or their weapons. It lies in their love for one another, in their unity.

Both Final Fantasy XII and XVI show ways in which we can make an impact by banding together and doing the right thing. We can take lessons from Final Fantasy XVI’s hideaway, building networks of mutual aid, feeding our neighbors, and shielding the vulnerable. Simultaneously, we must possess the moral clarity of Ashe in Final Fantasy XII. We must refuse to collaborate with the machinery of violence and understand that our strength does not come from the authority we wield, but from the community we protect. Things like AI and mass surveillance will only serve to harm the people in the end, so they must be turned away.

A spectral creature with glowing eyes and horns floats in a misty, ethereal setting. Its body is adorned with intricate patterns.

The Occuria in FFXII are the shadowy figures that control the course of history.

Image Credits: Square Enix

By saying “no” to those who would seek to steal our neighbors away and by declining the invitation to sit at the table of despotism, we can impose our will and create a better future. Helping your neighbor find food is resistance, alerting each other of the presence of ICE authorities is resistance, and even the act of cultivating joy is resistance. The stubborn insistence on living with dignity under a system that demands our submission empowers us.

In recent years, it has become evident that our institutions and political leaders offer limited safeguards against malevolent actors. Rather than act as a shield to safeguard our liberties, they have become the sword used to rend them. There will be no outside party to come and fix our problems. For us to reclaim the reins of history for mankind, we must be the heroes who take up the cause and stand together with our neighbors. We must be the shield against the violence aimed at our marginalized cohorts. We must become the warriors of light to stand against the darkness of chaos, and we must do it in service to one another.