Unpopular Opinion?

[SilverieLeaf]

Hot take. They should've canned Ultima and just made Barnabas the main villain.

During the beginning of the game, when we see the mysterious hooded figure guiding Clive around, I was fully convinced some evil cult was up to no good. Then we learn about the bearers and their plight, I was assuming the story would be something reminiscent of Tales of Arise. I really enjoyed traveling with Cid and playing freedom fighter. The only annoying part was Clive and Jill wallowing in guilt for every cutscene. But after Cid's death, the story took a real turn for the worse.

Suddenly there's this blue-skinned, four-armed alien in my medieval fantasy game.

Yes, there's an evil cult but they never actually show up in the story. All of the freedom fighting gets pushed back into side quests and now defeating Ultima becomes the main goal. I don't understand the logic. Yes, we're saving humanity from destruction. But once the mothercrystals are gone, the only source of magic will be bearers. Won't their treatment become even more severe afterwards? But after beating Ultima, all we get is a short scene of two kids playing happily in the future. I guess things worked out somehow?

I feel like the entire plot was a bait-and-switch. We start off fighting against slavery in feudal society but end up saving the world from an alien with a god-complex in an epic space battle. Not every story needs some outrageous, over-the-top villain.

[Haruko]

It's pretty heavily implied that the way Bearers are treated is as a result of Ultima. He says that he granted people magic, and while he slept, the magic caused them to gain wills and desires of their own, so Ultima resented them.
His plot was cooking long before the game started, and that's why the turning point is so important. It shows that for all Cid was fighting for, it was small in comparison to what he didn't know. FF stories are always grounded until you learn what's really going on and kill a god. That's just the way it is.

[Alexios]

I think Ultima is still a better antagonist because he's a much simpler character to understand. Barnabas is schizo lol.

[alumlovescake]

Ultima makes little sense and I feel like he solely exists to slander religion or something because his character in context of the game makes little sense and is quite laughable.


Why is he is powerful yet also so weak. Why couldn't he just make clive instead of making humanity. What is the extent of his power.

How are the eikons meant to be his to control when no one knows about him and the only person he approached was Bardabas. Why did Cid not tell Clive anything if Cid already knew about him


It all makes no sense

[The Sylvan Learning Center]

Well, most major religions kills or tortured anyone who dissents, when the religion is strong enough to get away with it, so maybe it's good to slander it a bit

[jordyexists]

I don't think Cid knew anything about Ultima. Nowhere is it implied that he does that I recall.

From what I understand, Ultima doesn't "just create Clive" because he also needs all the ether to be collected to cast the spell to terraform the planet and revive his race. Further, it is implied Ultima is more like a clock-maker than a gear, so to speak; that is, he sets events in motion and uses subterfuge to create an elaborate scheme that requires little direct involvement. He sets the entire cycle of Valisthea's ecosystem and then politics into motion and lets it play out in the same way humans treat domesticated plants and animals. He mostly supplies what the Valisteans need to "ripen" so they can be harvested.

You'll have to explain what you mean by "weak" because that isn't how I'd describe Ultima in any sense.

As for how he is in control, he uses mental, psychic manipulation, including hallucinations, to implant ideas and goals into the dominants he wants to subvert to his will, manipulating them into following a goal that they think they conceived, but is actually serving Ultima's plan. Clive absorbing all the other Eikons and destroying the crystals is an example of how Ultima is both subversive and indirect, but also still quite in control in the larger scheme of things.

What Ultima didn't account for was Clive resisting and refusing to give into existential despair, let alone having the will and individuality to do so. Since Ultima had become so accustomed to subverting humans to his will, he couldn't even conceive of them as sentient and wilful beings compared to his sense of consciousness and lifespan. The fact that one of these beings, of his own design, could possibly resist him seemed as likely as a herd of cows taking over a slaughterhouse and establishing their own state in defiance of the farmers and butchers would to be to us.