“Solidarity has a twofold quality, which is part of why it’s so firm,” wrote Cindy Barukh Milstein in her 2022 book, Try Anarchism for Life: The Beauty of Our Circle. “It involves first taking a side. And from there it entails sticking steadfastly side by side, both with others who are willingly there alongside you and those who by happenstance are being made to suffer the consequences of the opposite side—or other sides, because sometimes there are three-way (and more) fights.”
It’s striking how “normal” everyone in the main party of Final Fantasy XIII is. So much of the game’s narrative, conflict and resolution, ethos logos and pathos, is tied up in these characters’ mundane identities: sister, fiancé, father, son, protector, lover. Nobody starts out with superpowers; even Lightning, seen early on doing wild acrobatics with her gunblade slicing up PSICOM soldiers, is relying on technology and basic combat training in those scenes. Final Fantasy XIII wants you to really and truly understand: this cast is normal.
This normal-ness is what makes their task, forced upon them by inscrutable machine-gods, so seemingly insurmountable: save Cocoon? Destroy it? They can’t even be in the same room as each other. These normal people by and large hate each other. Lightning hates Snow for being a big dumbass; Hope, a child, hates Snow for getting his mother killed. Sazh hates Lightning for talking him into revolting against the government that has his son held hostage; Lightning hates Hope, the child, for being a burden in a time of crisis. Fang hates everyone for trying to find an alternative solution to their Focus. Vanille thinks everyone hates her for maybe kinda sorta accidentally kicking off the chain of events that brought everyone together. These dynamics, connections, relationships are messy and lopsided. They’re not equal, they don’t all develop at the same pace or with the same intensity as each other. Some of them are clearly, openly stated; others are more of just a vibe.
Cocoon’s society is jarringly, upsettingly normal. It’s recognizable despite all the future-tech utopian design. This was clocked at the time of its release. In Deep Fantasy, Michael Abbott wrote: “FFXIII is a post-9/11 meditation on fear, loss, and the desperate measures they provoke. It depicts leaders who ‘don’t run from fights,’ sending innocent citizens to their deaths. It explores the ramifications of demonizing an enemy to build public support for a war machine. It exposes the hollowness of jingoism in the face of profound personal pain.” And in A Fate That Binds: Understanding the Narrative of Final Fantasy XIII, Angelo from Bergsonian Critique wrote, “Cocoon is utopian, man-made, insular, and technically marvelous, yet it is ravaged by a portentous dread from the unknown and from a government that can complacently ‘purge’ an entire city on a groundless suspicion.”
The first half of Final Fantasy XIII, the long hallway, is the place where the cast is able to work past their individual alienation and upsets. As they go on the run from PSICOM soldiers and Cocoon citizens alike, these folks all learn vital lessons about themselves, manifested in their Eidolon battles. Lightning hates Snow and Hope, so her Eidolon fight involves switching to the Medic role to make sure Hope doesn’t faint. In Sazh’s Eidolon fight, he’s just learned Vanille’s role in everything and is grappling with the prospect of ever trusting her again; he has to support her with buffs in spite of his anger and pain. Fang’s fight involves her standing as a Sentinel against Bahamut’s onslaught so her party can chip him down – immediately after she attempts to betray them. In every situation, the best path forward is for the party to address their differences and conflicts, not put them off to the side or hide them, and to work through them honestly and openly. This is how we get from a scene early in the game where Lightning flat out decks Snow in the head, to the one toward the end where the party stands unified in opposition to God and the State.
In a word, Final Fantasy XIII is a messy, queer, unintentionally radical game about building solidarity. And it’s a great lesson to learn and internalize in these new uncertain times.
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