This post contains spoilers for Final Fantasy IX.
Final Fantasy IX is one of my favorite games of all time due to its overall strive for quality. Telling a heart-warming, heart-wrenching, and heartbreaking story with beautiful medieval-inspired music, a lush and emotional story of grand adventure, and a charismatic world inhabited by colorful creatures and people, it really is a masterpiece in gaming history. My favorite aspect of this work of art, though, is the attention to the characters and their development.
Final Fantasy IX is one of my favorite games of all time due to its overall strive for quality. Telling a heart-warming, heart-wrenching, and heartbreaking story with beautiful medieval-inspired music, a lush and emotional story of grand adventure, and a charismatic world inhabited by colorful creatures and people, it really is a masterpiece in gaming history. My favorite aspect of this work of art, though, is the attention to the characters and their development.
A gaudy flying ship is just part of the charm in IX's atmosphere. |
Rather than just a hero and villain getting their time in the limelight as we figure out their reason for having an adventure, I feel
like every character was thoroughly fleshed-out and deep. Not only does each
have a great deal of personality, but as the story unfolds, each character
develops and overcomes some kind of impactful inner struggle along the way.
Each character, to me, represented different parts of the human psyche, or at
least different feelings, as illustrated by their title screen quotes, and as
executed through their actions and dialogue in the story.
Zidane advocates the virtue of doing what is right for
right’s sake. Dagger endures the struggle between self and face. Vivi questions
what it truly means to exist. Every character has a purpose and portrays a
different path in life that the player can relate to.
But there is one character in the lineup that is often
ignored when we talk about these deep, meaningful characters: Quina Quen.
I do what I want! You have problem?! |
A lot of people see Quina as the comic relief character, and
indeed Quina does fulfill that role. But when the tension gets a little too
high, Quina doesn’t throw a pie in someone’s face or rattle off some potty
humor.
Sure, his/her strange way of talking makes him/her a bit
more difficult to take seriously than the other characters, but after reading
into what the character is saying, I think Quina may be the most
philosophically important character of them all.
Quina doesn’t interrupt a serious moment with simply humor.
Quina challenges the ideas and feelings of the other characters and, in turn,
the ideas and feelings of the player as well. Quina gives you the opportunity to reconsider what you have just learned or what you have just felt.
Quina’s basic character is a challenge to standard
thinking. Is Quina male or female? What does it mean to be “male” and female”?
Why does Quina follow Zidane and the others? Even in gameplay, Quina is an anomaly. Quina’s weapons are
forks, which do random amounts of damage, and each fork has some kind of
special ability seemingly out of nowhere. Are forks strong or weak? Perhaps the
answer is “both.” And I'm not even going to get into how eating enemies gives you their powers or how eating frogs powers up your magic...
Quina's master Quale offers a lot of Qu wisdom. |
"I do what I want! You have problem?!"
Final Fantasy IX’s theme is existence. The characters in the
game all play with the question “What does it mean to exist?” Vivi discovers
that the nature of his existence is not at all what he thought it was. Freya,
forgotten by the love of her life, feels as if she does not exist at all if she
doesn’t exist in her lover’s memory. Steiner struggles with the meaning of his
existence after shedding his blind loyalty to a corrupt empire.
Quina’s outlook on existence, however, is much different than the
others. The Qu tribe that s/he belongs to is defined by their obsession with
eating and food. Quina seems to exist for the sole purpose of eating, and has
no desire to do anything else. To the Qu, eating is life. Since Quina exists to
eat, this means Quina exists to live.
It’s an interesting position on the meaning of life. The purpose of our existence is, simply, to live. The other characters struggle to find
a meaning to their existence, the nature to their existence, or a way to
utilize their existence the best they can. Quina, on the other hand, simply
exists, and simply eats. There is no inner turmoil for Quina.
"Why you care about small things? World very simple place."
"Why you care about small things? World very simple place."
At the end of a scene in which two minor characters (one of
which is a shopkeeper) are discussing customers and money, the shopkeeper
begins to explain the meaning of money, but is interrupted by Quina:
“Why you care about small things? World very simple place.
World only have two things: Things you can eat, and things you no can eat.”
This quote is a favorite of mine because it challenges not
only standard thought, but the value of money. In Quina’s mind, products and
money are all part of a single group: things that are inedible. To Quina, this
group of things is worthless. But the other characters, and most players of the
game, put a high value on money.
But is money needed to live? Certainly, most people reading
this feel that money has some sort of value, and can’t simply be dismissed
because we can’t eat it. But what would life be like without money? Quina seems
to have everything s/he ever wanted out of life, in fact, s/he could easily be
considered the most successful of all the Qu throughout history. And s/he never
once thought about money.
I think too often, we forget that what we are used to is not
how life has to be. We grow up learning that we have to go to school, then we
have to get a job, then we do that for a long time and eventually we have
enough money to live after not having a job. But do we really need to do that?
Quina challenges this assumption that we have to live life
in this way. And it’s not a challenge that other people haven’t made before. A
few years ago, I discovered the concept of freeganism—an anti-consumerist
movement in which people live almost completely off discarded items. It’s a
life without a need for money. And a lot of freegans would consider themselves
to be very happy.
I believe Quina gives us a chance to redefine what is
important to us. With this type of thinking, we have the opportunity to value
what is truly important to ourselves. I think this is a secret to success.
Success is what we want it to be—not what is already to defined for us.
Quina doesn’t have money. But Quina ate more food and
experienced more dishes than any other Qu. Wouldn’t Quina be considered the
most successful of all the Qu people? Can we, then, define our own success in
this way? If we surround ourselves with the things that are important and
valuable to us, as individuals, are we not successful?
"Must eat to find out what taste good!"
"Must eat to find out what taste good!"
Quina as a Coca-Cola bottle topper. |
In another part of the game, before a battle with a big
baddie, the evil guy is taunting Zidane and Quina, calling their
measures to save the world futile, asking what they think they can do even
if they win this one fight. Quina, who displays no real interest in saving in
the world or winning fights, responds:
“Must eat to find out what taste good! Is my lesson from
traveling around the world.”
There are many messages here. I think an important one is
that you can’t know what is good until you’ve tried everything. If you just
always eat one food you like, you may never discover a hundred other foods that
you would love even more. Is this not a waste of your life? Quina’s quest is
not to save the world, but to develop his/her own character (which, in Quina’s
case, is that of eating).
But I feel that we cannot fully be ourselves if we have not
taken every opportunity available to us. If we eat our favorite food every day,
but haven’t tried all the other foods we could eat, are we really eating our
favorite? Or just some other food that we happen to like enough? There is no
reason not to keep trying everything.
And that is what Quina is trying to convey. It doesn’t even
matter if there is a goal—you just have to keep trying. And not in just the
cliché “never give up” sense, but in a literal sense. Even when you have
succeeded, you keep trying. You just keep going, having new experiences and
discoveries. You are never done with life. There is always something out there
for you to eat, and you don’t know if it’s good or not yet.
Even among Final Fantasy IX's colorful, quirky cast, Quina seems to stand out. |
Quina challenges our perceptions of the world, the meaning
to our existence, and promotes a life of meaningful experiences. I think of
every character in Final Fantasy IX, Quina
very well could be the most thought-provoking of them all.
If you’ve never played before, I urge you to experience this
wonderful game from beginning to end, and if you have played before, try it
again, and pay attention to what our frog-catching friend has to say. I think
we could all learn a thing or two (while laughing!) from the ironic beauty of Qu
philosophy.
Final Fantasy IX and artwork are property of Square-Enix
Final Fantasy IX and artwork are property of Square-Enix
A very good breakdown of a very good game. I will be spreading the word about this post.
ReplyDeleteIf you would like, you can check out my blog as well, I need to write more analysis articles such as this one, but I still have different things about games on there. Mostly news.
Keep it up, I look forward to the next one.
Thanks a million! I will definitely give your blog a look-see :)
ReplyDeleteAmen, brother. FFIX is by far my favorite game of all time, and one of my goals for this year is to write a philosophical analysis of the game, including characters, events, etc. My goal, silly as it may seem, is to create a sort of "textbook" and create a sort of legitimate academic community/scholarship surrounding video games and philosophy.
ReplyDeleteLofty goal? Yep. Am I obsessed with FFIX? Maybe a little. But hey, if books and film get analyzed to hell, why not do it with video games? :)
Anyway, again, awesome article. Quina was always the one character I could never really figure out, and you've helped me on that path. /inspired
Dear me, I'm not even sure... do I agree, or don't? I definitely see an interesting point you are making about the character. Who knows, maybe someday I'll give the game another try and I'll see what you mean
ReplyDelete