Change or Live: Final Fantasy X as Catholic Dystopia 2

This month, the Ontological Geek has a theme: reli­gion and/or the­ol­o­gy in games. We have a great bunch of arti­cles lined up, from the very per­son­al to the deeply the­o­ret­i­cal, from both reg­u­lar OntoGeek con­trib­u­tors and sev­er­al guest writ­ers. We’d love to hear from you with your thoughts on spe­cif­ic arti­cles and the month as a whole – com­ment freely and e‑mail us at editor@ontologicalgeek.com!

Spoilers Abound.

Dystopia, in the sim­plest of terms, is a sub­ver­sion of the ideal. It’s an argu­ment against utopi­an think­ing — it’s a voice call­ing for dis­cus­sion and rea­son­able thought. Dystopian nar­ra­tives often imag­ine a hor­rif­ic sce­nario and run it even fur­ther to the ground, as well as present glob­al ram­i­fi­ca­tions of grand ideas taken too far. However, they con­cen­trate around a per­son­al night­mare of an indi­vid­ual trapped in this dis­as­trous future built upon the foun­da­tion of seem­ing­ly beau­ti­ful words spo­ken by its lead­ers.

And I believe it’s a great prism through which one can view Final Fantasy X. The most pop­u­lar read­ings of the 2001 game are based around its theme of anti-religion in the orga­ni­za­tion­al sense. Like in many games, the vil­lains are reli­gious lead­ers who have cor­rupt­ed them­selves and every­thing around them to achieve some mad objec­tive. But there’s a lot more to this par­tic­u­lar story. It trav­els fur­ther and sees more. I would argue that one can eas­i­ly read Final Fantasy X not as an attack on insti­tu­tion­al reli­gion as a whole but as a con­cerned voice shar­ing many of the same val­ues.

My inter­pre­ta­tion is dri­ven by a belief that art can and maybe even should be appro­pri­at­ed by var­i­ous reli­gions. Why reject it when it can be of value? The choice of Catholicism stems from the fact that I’ve been brought up in it, and thus it col­ors my out­look on the world and by extent on reli­gion as a whole. Also, I believe there is a cer­tain dual­i­ty to the world of Final Fantasy X because I do not find the world pre­sent­ed in the game to be worse than the one we live in. Visually, it is pre­sent­ed as a beau­ti­ful green space. There doesn’t seem to be any kind of dis­ease, you can speak your mind freely and live rel­a­tive­ly peace­ful­ly while the reli­gion stays an impor­tant aspect of life. Taking that into account, one can build an argu­ment that this is a suc­cess­ful utopi­an cre­ation.

Final Fantasy X takes place in Spira. It’s a world full of lush veg­e­ta­tion, magic and an occa­sion­al mon­ster here and there. There is only one reli­gion: a lud­dite group called the Church of Yevon. Technology and magic are inter­change­able in Spira – both can serve the same pur­pos­es and improve var­i­ous aspects of life — trans­porta­tion, pro­duc­tion, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, even med­i­cine. Therefore, their rejec­tion of advanced tech­nol­o­gy isn’t as dras­tic or rad­i­cal as it would be in our real­i­ty and the choice to out­law machin­ery stems from the fact it’s not real­ly need­ed. Moreover,the tech­nol­o­gy ban is explained by his­tor­i­cal expe­ri­ence of this soci­ety with large-scale war­fare between the sup­port­ers of sci­ence and mag­i­cal users. In this way, they intend to dis­tance them­selves from the vio­lent past.

It works extreme­ly well too — the Church has man­aged to avoid anoth­er war for thou­sands of years and to unite the var­i­ous races and tribes of the land. Only one, the Al Bhed, still stay out­side of the influ­ence of Yevon and use tech­nol­o­gy, but they reside on the out­skirts of Spira and rarely inter­fere or inter­act with the rest of the world. In other words, the pre­sent­ed soci­ety has to deal with almost absolute reli­gious dom­i­nance. This is a cen­tral piece of the con­flict. The con­flict that seem­ing­ly doesn’t exist, but is actu­al­ly mul­ti­lay­ered and inter­twined through the whole nar­ra­tive.

The moment the play­er enters Spira, he meets the Al Bhed in an unpleas­ant and rough encounter that seems to be pre­sent­ing them as vil­lains of the game. That sus­pi­cion is only strength­ened after you get sep­a­rat­ed and land in a small idyl­lic vil­lage by the sea. There, the atmos­phere is com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent. It’s sunny and green, and peo­ple are delight­ful. You are also pre­sent­ed with the cul­ture and tra­di­tion of the Church of Yevon. It’s strange, it’s strict and it’s dif­fer­ent, but see­ing peo­ple pray­ing in a tem­ple some­how makes it easy to accept it on the spot. It feels famil­iar and seems to pos­i­tive­ly affect every­one, as if every­thing is all right with the world.

But noth­ing can be this sim­ple. The wrench in the works of the utopi­an con­cept of Spira is named Sin. It’s a gigan­tic mon­ster trav­el­ing the oceans and destroy­ing cities. It is like a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter strik­ing unex­pect­ed­ly and ruin­ing lives of nor­mal cit­i­zens. Consequently, the destruc­tion of Sin is your main objec­tive as a play­er, and you quick­ly find out that it’s also what the Church of Yevon strives to achieve. You share this com­mon goal and hap­pi­ly join a num­ber of denizens of Spira on a pil­grim­age to defeat this impu­ri­ty.

You and your newly found friends are proud and eager to do what must be done, but as the nar­ra­tive unfolds, the sit­u­a­tion becomes increas­ing­ly more com­pli­cat­ed. You are sup­posed to die while defeat­ing Sin. You didn’t know that. The mon­ster will only dis­ap­pear for a num­ber of years and then return. No one told you. If there was a per­cep­tion of Spira as utopia in the player’s mind, it falls apart the fur­ther the road takes us. Moreover, the dis­man­tling of this sim­ple world with a peace­ful reli­gion is extreme­ly thor­ough.

By the time you reach the end, you find the awful truth — unbe­knownst to all, Sin is the armor of Yevon him­self. The hero, the prophet of the reli­gion, cre­at­ed the mon­ster to save his peo­ple in the time of war, but in the process his mind was destroyed and Sin has roamed the world ever since. So Sin is the destruc­tion of a dream – com­plete cor­rup­tion of some­thing that was sup­posed to be pos­i­tive.

Sin is a metaphor for mis­use of tra­di­tion. It has been in exis­tence for thou­sands of years, and cit­i­zens of Spira have never real­ly known what it is or why it exists. The reli­gion was cre­at­ed around the idea that Sin is a form of pun­ish­ment for wag­ing war with tech­nol­o­gy. It’s an appro­pri­a­tion gone hor­ri­bly wrong. Yunalesca, the daugh­ter of Yevon and cre­ator of his Church, cre­at­ed the frame­work of the reli­gion around Sin. She devised a scheme to weak­en the mon­ster for a few years, thus tem­porar­i­ly elim­i­nat­ing the threat — two peo­ple need to die every ten years or so after com­plet­ing a spir­i­tu­al journey/pilgrimage. They need to sac­ri­fice them­selves to bring peace and hap­pi­ness to the peo­ple.

What the Church of Yevon is attempt­ing is theod­i­cy for the sake of theod­i­cy. They jus­ti­fy the suf­fer­ing and death caused by Sin as god-given and attempt to slap a band-aid on the result­ing wound every so often instead of offer­ing a real solu­tion. But here in the land where magic is a real­i­ty and the effects of sac­ri­fice are plain­ly vis­i­ble, that’s not on people’s minds — the tra­di­tion stands above all. Change isn’t a viable idea because they aren’t used to it. They can­not imag­ine it, because weak­en­ing Sin is vis­i­bly only pos­si­ble with the help of the Church.

In effect, there is almost no sec­u­lar­iza­tion in Spira. How can it be? There is only one reli­gion, which rejects tech­no­log­i­cal progress and embraces rit­u­al, magic and mys­ti­cism. The rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the only other cul­ture, which seems to be the com­plete oppo­site of the Yevon peo­ple, stay out of the world’s affairs. It’s an opti­mal sit­u­a­tion for this reli­gion because it has immense power and influ­ence, and it has to care only about the orga­ni­za­tion­al aspect of its func­tion­ing. To the unaware cit­i­zens and to a new play­er, Spira may seem to be a utopia. Only after study­ing its his­to­ry and dis­cov­er­ing its secrets do we find out its true nature – its reli­gious sys­tem is based on lies and cyn­i­cal deci­sions hid­den under the shell of pow­er­ful magic and thriv­ing nature. It is a frame­work devised to keep peo­ple happy and con­tent through an illu­sion of god. It’s mis­un­der­stand­ing of human con­di­tion.

While the nar­ra­tive of Final Fantasy X is based around a young man named Tidus, the two most impor­tant indi­vid­u­als in the tale of Spira are Yuna and Seymour. Yuna is a sum­mon­er, a per­son sent on a pil­grim­age to dif­fer­ent tem­ples of Yevon in order to pre­pare for the sac­ri­fice which will allow her to tem­porar­i­ly defeat Sin. And Seymour is a maester of Yevon – a high level priest who has a slight­ly dif­fer­ent vision of the role of the Church. Both char­ac­ters were raised in this par­tic­u­lar reli­gion but man­aged to out­grow it in two very dif­fer­ent ways.

Moreover, if Church of Yevon were read as a metaphor for Christianity it would be a dystopia too. A reli­gion based on a lie that com­plete­ly rejects progress isn’t real­ly a valid stand-in for Christianity. But the dis­tinc­tion between the two is best vis­i­ble through Seymour and Yuna. In con­text of Yevon, Seymour is a schol­ar, under­stand­ing the reli­gion more than any­one else, and Yuna is a blas­phe­mer.

However, in my Christian inter­pre­ta­tion, Seymour plays the role of an antichrist – he wants every­one dead, he believes mercy-killing the pop­u­la­tion of Spira is the log­i­cal con­clu­sion to his reli­gion. It might be easy to per­ceive Seymour as yet anoth­er point­less­ly mega­lo­ma­ni­a­cal vil­lain, but there’s much more to him than that. Death works very dif­fer­ent­ly in Spira. After you die, you often do not sim­ply leave for the plains of after­life. In order to do that, the rit­u­al of send­ing has to be per­formed. This con­cept is real­ly quite sim­i­lar to the Catholic last rites per­formed after the person’s death – it’s the require­ment for the soul to rest. However, as men­tioned ear­li­er, Yevon’s reli­gion is very lit­er­al and mag­i­cal. So if the dead aren’t “sent,” they walk the earth – the strong-willed in their cor­po­re­al form, the oth­ers changed into the monster-like “fiends” that pop­u­late the world.

This is one part of life in soci­ety where reli­gion plays an essen­tial role. Separation of life and death is essen­tial to make them both. But Seymour, when con­front­ed with this truth can’t accept it. Thus, the idea was born to end life com­plete­ly. By this act he means to achieve a greater good, but he’s too young and too rash – mis­guid­ed. Lost. To me, Seymour is a satan­ic fig­ure because his idea of sav­ing the world is in direct oppo­si­tion to those preached by Jesus. Instead of sac­ri­fic­ing him­self, he wants to sac­ri­fice us. His inten­tions seem right­eous yet the effects of his action may be down­right dev­il­ish. He could be the sav­ior and he believes he is love yet in real­i­ty he is the anti-thesis of both – Seymour is the har­bin­ger of death.

In this way Yuna is extreme­ly sim­i­lar to him. After find­ing the truth about Sin, she too needs to make a big deci­sion: Follow her sense of duty and do what is expect­ed of her as a summoner/living sac­ri­fice or try to break the cycle. Unsurprisingly, she choos­es change. Luckily for Spira her con­cep­tion of the greater good and of break­ing the cycle varies from Seymour’s. Yuna decides to take action and go against the tra­di­tion – to try the impos­si­ble and defeat Sin com­plete­ly. Her actions aren’t meant to change the cit­i­zens of Spira but to elim­i­nate an obsta­cle that makes their life more dif­fi­cult. She wants them to live.

In the end, she suc­ceeds and Seymour fails, but they were arguably just two sides of the same coin. They both rep­re­sent­ed change and reform, and a break from the tra­di­tion that was harm­ful to the soci­ety. To me, this story depicts the endgame of reli­gion – a utopi­an moment of unity in the same belief. The soci­ety and the Church itself believed that they had arrived to the con­clu­sion of their reli­gious jour­ney. All is known, the peo­ple are as happy as they are ever going to be. That’s why they avoid change and progress. After all, change may be dif­fi­cult and prob­lem­at­ic, maybe even poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous.

This is sim­i­lar to the Catholic strug­gles between tra­di­tion and sci­ence but it also takes on the clas­si­cal dystopi­an theme of “change or die.” Final Fantasy X cre­ates a utopia-like world where sci­ence isn’t real­ly need­ed any­more and in this way tips the scale in favor of tra­di­tion, nature and reli­gion. The sta­tus quo is accept­able. The prob­lem is that the ori­gins of Spira are clear­ly and absolute­ly dystopi­an – many books in the genre start in this way – after the war, a lie was con­ceived to make the peo­ple happy and an enemy was cre­at­ed to make them con­cen­trate on the out­side issues.

Thus, Yevon as well as Seymour rep­re­sent death and lack of change. They are the rea­son why the world and the soci­ety and trapped in a reli­gious dystopia. Christianity func­tions com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent – it accepts that life is a spir­i­tu­al jour­ney full of strug­gle. It is a process requir­ing you to look to the inside to engage with God to progress. Therefore, life and change are relat­ed to each other and reject­ing any of them is a mis­take. The game’s nar­ra­tive affirms the same val­ues. Yuna is a Christ-like fig­ure because she leads the way to the game’s con­clu­sion through suf­fer­ing, friend­ship and love. And the final mes­sage of the game seems to be live hap­pi­ly, dream and change.