This is intended as an index to the recorded voice lines of Final Fantasy X. The audio files themselves are not stored here, but can be downloaded in WAV format from The Sounds Resource.

Using the Sphere Grid

On the difference between fiends and the unsent:

“The dead need guidance. Filled with grief over their own death, they refuse to face their fate. They yearn to live on, and resent those still alive. You see, they envy the living. And in time, that envy turns to anger, even hate. Should these souls remain in Spira, they become fiends that prey on the living.”

Fic writers often depict Braska as a white mage, perhaps because Yuna is as well and perhaps also because summoning seems to be the preserve of white mages in FF9. In the mobile games where Braska is playable, though, he’s more of a black mage: in FFRK, iirc, he was a black mage with fire affinities, and the same is (was? ☹️) true in DFFOO, where he has a couple of white spells (Curaga for one) but these are outnumbered by black ones. In FFBE, he appears to be some kind of support unit? It looks like most of his abilities just apply buffs, but I also never play this game and don’t really know what’s going on.

Tidus’ mother is dead, therefore she appears on the Farplane. However, Tidus’ mother is also not a real person. So dead dreams appear to be just as able to manifest themselves on the Farplane as actual people.

I watched the FFX kabuki. It was very cool! I definitely felt as if I was missing out on a lot by just watching it in our wee gaming room while also attempting to grapple with certain overly ambitious handicrafts, because it was clearly meant as an Experience: go to the theatre, spend the whole day there (the full performance lasts about six hours), have some tenuously FFX-themed food, buy some official merch (I’m still disappointed that I never managed to get hold of the Braska standee they were selling at the performances).

Back in November the young Auron costume was announced for DFFOO and this obviously made me unreasonably excited. At the time, the delay between JP and GL was consistent enough to make it possible to predict the exact day the content would be released in the latter. Young Auron was supposed to be arriving early last month; I had been hoarding materials since he was first announced so I could obtain and max his new weapons and boards, pretty standard stuff.

Some very dedicated trawling of the internet a few months ago led me to MintArisu’s collection of FFX character models, which includes various excellently obscure entries such as the shoopuf and several varieties of fiend. Today, the need to know the answers to such burning questions as “does Braska wear a wedding ring?” and “what is the exact configuration of beads hanging from Auron’s belt?” finally got the better of me, so I downloaded the Auron and Braska models and XNALara and had a look at them.

Today in “questions only I would ask”: how tall, exactly, is Braska? The FFX Ultimania apparently tells us that Auron and Jecht are 182cm and 190cm respectively. But there’s presumably no information on Braska, although fortunately in the spheres from his pilgrimage we do get a couple of shots where he stands beside one of his guardians. Based on these, we can measure Braska against Auron, or against Jecht, or indeed both. We have to make sure both characters’ feet are in shot, firstly so we can be sure they’re an equal distance from the camera and that there aren’t any proportion issues; secondly, to calculate the relative difference in heights.

Happy birthday to that old game I’m still belatedly obsessed with! 🥳🎉

Still trawling through every single file from the FFX voice lines – I’ve just made it to the Via Purifico. A few lines have come up that didn’t make it into the final game (either the Japanese or English versions); I don’t pretend to be so familiar with the whole script that I can spot them instantly, but one component I am extremely familiar with is the content of the spheres from Braska’s pilgrimage, and it turns out that the scene where they meet Jecht in the prison has not one but two sections that ended up being cut.

After last week’s teaser, fave number two finally became playable in DFFOO yesterday morning, and I spent a good hour in a hotel room in Poland diligently maxing him. Once again, I have a lot of unnecessarily pedantic quibbles with the actual storyline of the chapter, but will save those for the conclusion of this thrilling saga (a fascinating read, I’m sure) – this post is just a few notes on Braska as a playable character.

It’s a good time to be a FFX fan who plays FF mobile games, because not only have I spent many hours over the past few days playing WotV in an earnest attempt at maxing ✨My Boy✨, but also over in DFFOO it’s finally time for BRASKA!!! Or, I guess not, as apparently he’s still not playable yet, even though the events of the chapter literally make reference to him fighting alongside Jecht and Auron … looks like I’ll have to wait another week.

The Final Fantasy Wiki says the following about the Al Bhed:

A mechanic called Alb created a race called Bedohls, humans who could not use magic but excelled at wielding machina … The surviving Bedohls became known as the Al Bhed, a corrupted mesh of their original name and their creator's name.

Ok, so you know how a lot of priests in FFX wear weird white semi-fingerless gloves? Do they not vaguely resemble the kind of gloves people would wear to treat arthritis?

Started reading FFX-2.5: Le prix de l'éternité, aka the novel that everyone hates. I think I did skim over the extremely sub-par English translation a while ago, but seeing as the French version is a properly translated one and, er, I can actually read French, I realised that was not the optimum way forward.

There are a couple of places online that list Auron, Braska and Jecht’s lines from the final battles in FFX-2, but nowhere seems to have the complete list, and the lists I’ve seen have a number of lines that are misattributed. It must be really difficult to transcribe them from the game, where there are all sorts of other noises going on and the lines are only triggered by specific conditions. Going through the actual sound files (is clearly overkill but) gives a much clearer impression of who says what, so obviously, that’s what I did.

More headcanons about Braska, less unremittingly Sad and in fact somewhat tongue-in-cheek featuring just a little bit of angst (because, a. me, b. Braska) – by the time he starts his pilgrimage, he hasn’t had his hair cut by a professional for at least eight years because everyone in Bevelle goes out of their way to snub him, and this for some reason includes the, er, barbers’ guild, all of whom are devout followers of Yevon I guess? Anyway, the reason Braska keeps his hair completely covered up isn’t because of some kind of religious thing, it’s because he’s been cutting it himself for years and he’s terrible at it. (fun fact I say this as someone who has been cutting their own hair for the last three years because going to ladies’ hairdressers as a GNC person is an extremely uncomfortable experience, and … let’s say it’s an adventure)

I stand by my interpretation that Braska goes on the pilgrimage because he’s suicidal. Nobody makes reference to this ten years later, but why would they? Everything everyone (except Auron) knows about Braska’s motivations comes from two sources: Yevon’s official narrative, and Yuna’s memories of her father. Given the nature of Yevonite society I don’t think it’s a huge leap to suggest they would be highly offended by the mere notion of depression and suicide and would want to sweep that under the carpet as soon as possible. As for the other, Braska surely wouldn’t have been telling his seven-year-old daughter about how much he wanted to die. Not to say there’s no truth in “my father wanted to make Spira’s sorrow go away”; I’m sure that’s a valid reason for his pilgrimage as well. I just think going through with it allowed him to achieve that while also fulfilling the personal goal of putting an end to his own existence. He’d been disgraced and rejected by his people for the sake of his marriage, and now even his wife was gone, and … he was a very lonely and miserable person, who decided that becoming a summoner would be the most profitable way of ending his life.

Do you like slash? Do you like suffering? Do you like celebrated but old videogames that are no longer especially present in public discourse? Then read on, friend, I’ve got a ship for you!