Introduction & Key: Final Fantasy XII Complete Script

Pardon the dust! The script is currently under construction!

Please, by all means, still feel free to read to your heart’s content! You should encounter no terribly great obstacles, but please be aware that I am revising the existing parts of the script, as well as changing how this script is formatted to make it more easily readable. For the time being, this may mean some weird inconsistencies in some places. Thank you in advance for your patience!

So What Is It?

What this is: A comprehensive transcript of the entirety of the Playstation 2 game Final Fantasy XII, including everything from cutscenes to NPC dialogue and item interactions.

What this is not: A walkthrough or strategy guide; this script is not written with any intention to be a guide to gameplay, battle, boss battles, etc. It covers all the bases script-wise, including side quests and hunts, but I do not actually give any advice on completing these hunts and side quests; that’s on you. (I will say that I have used BradyGames’ Final Fantasy XII Strategy Guide in subsequent playthroughs and found it immensely helpful, if you are looking for a strategy guide. Of course, Internet walkthroughs have proliferated considerably since then, too, and y’know, they’re free. Also, I’m sure this ol’ guide doesn’t quite square well with ZA.)  

Why Did You Write This Thing in the First Place?

Excellent question!

I actually dedicated an entire post to this explanation, which you can find here.

I would hope this goes without saying, but I’m certainly not claiming this as mine. Final Fantasy XII, the Final Fantasy series and the Ivalice Alliance project are properties of developer and publisher Square Enix and their wonderful and talented staff that produced this beauteous piece of interactive art.

Differences Between Zodiac Age and the Original Game

The differences between the scripts of the two games seems to be entirely minimal - mostly just correcting little grammatical inconsistencies between cutscene subtitles and dialogue from the original game. So far, I haven’t seen anything that warrants footnotes and certainly not divergent scripts, so I’m not going to bother differentiating.

If this changes, I will absolutely keep you guys posted.

Basic Key

There’s a few things you might want to note about how I wrote this script. Here’s a short key:

Anything shaded in yellow like this is a cinematic or FMV. You can tell these apart from regular cutscenes in the game by the much higher visual quality. Because these are more cinematic in nature and tend to have less in way of dialogue, I’ll keep my descriptions of these brief and try to post the video instead. 

Anything shaded in green like this is a cutscene or non-FMV scene. In these scenes, the graphics are not as polished as in the FMVs, but still the dialogue and action plays in real time like a movie. As with a lot of TV or movie scripts, I’ll only provide as much description as is needed to understand why this character said this or that – after all, I’m writing this script for people who I assume have played before and are familiar with the game, and just want to note some of the dialogue.        

Anything shaded in purple like this is an excerpt from the Memoirs of Mqs. Halim Ondore IV. At various intervals throughout the game, one of these excerpts will be read, narrated by Ondore himself, between cutscenes, to sum up events or even to shed a little more light on them. 

Anything in blue is a player-moves-the-action-along type scene that is not really story-related. Many of these will be tutorials, or hunt or side-story related prompts. 

As for anything without a background, that will be NPC dialogue.

Note: The above format will change gradually in the future. Some parts of the script will reflect this and some will not as I progress through the script. The old format key will remain until revision is complete. After revision it will be formatted as follows:

• FMVs will not have a background color. They will be already enclosed with a Show/Hide Dialogue button and easy to distinguish.
• Non-FMV cutscene dialogue will be presented like quotes, that is, indented toward the side, like the color key above. It will also not have a background color.
• Excerpts from the Marquis’s memoirs will not have a background color because they’re already presented in their own post and therefore easy to distinguish.
• Player-guided cutscenes and tutorials will continue to have the blue background color, as well as be quoted like non-FMV cutscenes.

The main characters all have color-coded dialogue too, so you can spot them a little easier. Here’s the key for that:

Vaan’s dialogue 

Penelo’s dialogue 

Balthier’s dialogue 

Fran’s dialogue 

Basch’s dialogue 

Ashe’s dialogue

NPC Dialogue

NPCs or non-player characters are the people walking city streets or other bystanders in the area who you can interact with. It is not required that you interact with them, and it is not imperative to the story at all. NPC dialogue is probably the most interesting part of this whole script and the reason I wrote it in the first place; it can be put in simply for fun, or it can clarify the lore and legend of the world of Ivalice, or even tell you something entirely new about the world; NPCs can also give you more “practical” tips on reaching story-related or non-story-related objectives, on gameplay, battle mechanics, items, maps, etc.

Table of Contents

You’ll notice I include a “table of contents” at the beginning of each chapter. These contents are ALL dialogue (including NPC dialogue, cutscenes, and FMV) sorted by LOCATION. I categorize location the same way the game’s maps are organized. The location in bold underline is the main location, like The Royal City of Rabanastre, or the Dalmasca Estersand. Each of these main locations has many sublocations which are non-boldface and underlined, for example, within Rabanastre, there is the East End, the North End, or the Muthru Bazaar. To make it apparent when a cutscene or an FMV happens - since these are what move the story along - they are also included in italics underneath whatever location they happen in. Everything is, of course, in chronological order under their location.

Note: Location names will be formatted differently in the newly revised posts. Locations will be written in headline font and sub locations in subheading font.

Example:

The Royal City of Rabanastre

East End

Dialogue Progression

As you know, a lot of NPCs will only say one thing, no matter how many times you talk to them. Their dialogue will change depending on your story progression – for example, early in the game, your friend Bucco down on the East End will say this before the consul's parade:

Bucco: Everyone sure seems busy today. You, Kytes, Penelo… Me? Don’t worry, I’ve got my own work to keep me busy. Heh heh. I’m gonna be so rich that – I know! I’ll be rich enough to buy an airship! You can ride it anytime you want, Vaan!

And Bucco will say this same thing whether you talk to him once, twice, ten times, or a hundred. He'll keep saying it until the consul's parade. Once you've seen the consul's parade, though, Bucco's dialogue will change to this:

Bucco: Hey, Vaan. I saw you and Penelo together during the parade. You sly dog…

So as you've noticed, the major factor in determining whether dialogue changes or not is the story. Now, I wrote this script in “chapters”. Each chapter contains certain major story-related events. Usually, an NPC’s dialogue won’t change until the next chapter.  You can can find Bucco's first quote in the example in Chapter 1, and his second quote in Chapter 2.

When A Character's Dialogue Changes Over One Chapter...

There will always be a few NPCs, though, whose dialogue changes in between different cutscenes in one chapter. So let’s say, after describing cutscene A, I list all the dialogue for the East End. Then cutscene B is described – and after that, I list East End dialogue again, although you notice it’s not as extensive as it was before cutscene B. Only NPCs who have something new to say after cutscene B, will be written in after cutscene B. If they only say the same thing, their dialogue will not be written in after cutscene B.

Easier said than understood! Let's look at an example:

[Cutscene A, stuff happens, la la la… And hey, look, we unlocked a new, NPC-populated location afterward!] 

East End 

NPC 1: Hey, hey, I got stuff to say about Cutscene A.  

NPC 2: Hey, me too, I got stuff to say! 

[Now here’s Cutscene B. Yeah story progression!] 

East End 

NPC 1: Oh, hey, now I got even more new and interesting stuff to talk about! 

[Cutscene C! Moving along!]

Hey, so what’s happened to NPC 2? Well, he didn’t have anything new to say after Cutscene B. He’s still running around going “Hey, me too, I got stuff to say!” and I don’t got time to be typing the same thing over and over again when you already heard/read it.

The whether-or-not-anybody-got-anything-more-interesting-to-say rule is reflected in the table of contents. If I list East End under Rabanastre again later in the table of contents, that means a cutscene happened and that there are now folks in the East End what got somethin' new to say. But, I didn’t list North End again. That’s because nobody in North End has anything new to say, even after the cutscene, so we’re gonna skip them for now! In the table this looks like so:

Rabanastre                

>Cutscene A

>East End

>North End

>Cutscene B

>East End

>Cutscene C

Now, once in a great while there is an NPC whose dialogue changes depending on how many times you talk to them. I’ll indicate these with a x2 or x3 marker, to indicate what they’re saying the second and third times you talk to them. For example:

NPC: Hey, listen to this, blah blah blah.
NPC (x2): Oh, and furthermore! Blah blah blah blah blah.
NPC (x3): And another thing, blah blah blah blah blah blah.

Further Notes on Location Organization

There’s a few reasons I categorize dialogue by location. One, even the sublocations are sometimes big enough that you might get lost trying to follow the NPC dialogue from one part of Rabanastre to another, because you didn’t go the same route through Rabanastre – or, maybe, you don’t have the game in front of you as a visual aid at all. It might behoove you to check the table of contents to get to a particular area you’re looking for.

Example time! East End in Rabanastre has a LOT of shops. If you start at the north end of East End, and hit up each shop going from north to south, the order of these sublocations branching off East End will be Batahn’s, The Sandsea, Yugri’s, Panamis’s, Amal’s, Migelo’s. This is also how they will be listed in the table of contents, simply because I try to keep things in a chronological or logical order for sake of consistency. Thing is, you’re maybe following along, and you don’t wanna hit up each shop from north to south. No, you’re comin’ in from the north, and skipping a few shops, making a beeline for Panamis’s. So why dredge through the dialogue for Batahn’s, The Sandsea, and Yugri’s trying to get to Panamis’s? Just go back to the table and find Panamis’s and boom, you’re there.

Multiple NPCs

Now within sublocations, it can still get confusing, because I list NPCs primarily by the label that appears when you interact with them in-game. Some NPCs have names and will be labeled by them, like Johm, Bucco, or Migelo; some NPCs will have certain brief descriptors as labels, like Dispirited Woman or Wistful Bangaa; but the vast majority of NPCs are labeled with generic titles, like “Rabanastran”, if you’re in Rabanastre, or “Imperial” if it’s an Imperial soldier. The problem with this is that you often get fifteen Rabanastrans running around one area of Rabanastre. How are you supposed to know the one you’re looking at onscreen is the same one saying the dialogue listed here in the script? 

If an NPC has a generic label, I will provide little visual descriptors in parantheses after the label to help clue you in on which is which. For example:

Rabanastran (woman in pink top pacing): lalalalala Rabanastan (red bangaa standing by bridge): shalalalaRabanastran (kid jumping up and down next to his dad): dadadadadoo

But there’s two red bangaa in this one area, you say! What do I do! Don’t worry, I won’t leave you hanging. You can bet I’ll put something to distinguish between the two red bangaa – one might be “red bangaa standing by bridge”, and the other might be “red bangaa talking with blue seeq.”

There are also some NPCs whose names/tags change once you speak to them. For example, there’s a woman called the Beachcomber in the South Bank Village of the Estersand, but when you speak to her her name becomes Ada. Therefore she’ll be identified in the script as Beachcomber/Ada.

The Races of Ivalice

I sometimes identify NPCs by their race to clarify which I'm talking about, so you need to know the races of Ivalice! Even fans of the game don’t always know what all these are, so here’s a list.

Humes: The Ivalician equivalent of humans, they look just like us, of course. If I say simply man, woman, or kid, then it’s safe to assume I’m talking about a hume.

Bangaa: Bangaa are humanoid reptilians, with scaly skin like a lizard, which can come in various colors, as well as lizard-like tails, beak-like snouts, and often floppy ears. They have broad shoulders and chests, but are otherwise quite thin and sleek. In the strategy guide, it’s revealed that they sometimes wear blindfolds as a fashion statement, since they mostly rely on their hearing and smell anyway! So, don’t be surprised if I say “tan bangaa in blindfold.”

Seeq: While bangaa resemble lizards, a seeq’s closest relative would probably be a pig or boar. They are big and, well, pretty fat. Their oversized bodies are supported by strangely small, thin legs like a pig’s hind legs; their skin (again like bangaa’s) can come in various colors; they possess piglike snouts with… teeth you wouldn’t really envy… and often have horns on their heads.

Moogles: A staple of the Final Fantasy series, the adorable, mythical moogle reappears in this installment as one of the Ivalician races. Moogles are about a quarter of the height of the average hume adult, and resemble mice. They have white fur, small vestigial wings on their backs, big ears kind of like a rabbit’s or dormouse’s, and their tails are like little strings with pom-poms on the ends! Also, you will notice moogles have the curious quirk of saying “kupo!” a lot!

Viera: Imagine real Playboy bunnies. As in, fashion model-gorgeous women with bunny ears and tails. Since, y’know, let’s be real, that’s gotta be what they were goin’ for. Viera are almost exclusively female (it’s said there are male viera too, but you won’t find one in Final Fantasy XII), and tend to be very tall, lithe, and beautiful. As stated, they have rabbit tails and rabbit ears, rabbit-like feet (for which reason viera are most comfortable in heels as a result), and most often have dark skin, white or silver hair and red eyes. (Many dye their hair, though, like the two viera in the opening cinematic.) One of the main characters, Fran, is a viera.