Quote Originally Posted by Nalien View Post
Goes much further though, the entire first half of Tempest brings to mind the City of the Ancients from VII, at least IMO, although Amaurot itself leans in a very different direction. Prior to the final dungeon, Emet does the Sephiroth-walk-through-fire (which I actually didn't like, given we'd already had Nael do that...), and the events surrounding The Final Days actually brings to mind the backstory of the Ancients in VII as well... Mysterious "noise" infecting the planet and terrifying the Ancients and causing their magic to run amok? Hopefully we're not dealing with space herpes here, but one can't help but note the frequency of meteor showers during The Final Days... Zodiark and Hydaelyn as a "solution" also strike me as a mirrored parallel to the White and Black Materia, respectively (Zodiark I feel having more in common with the White Materia than the Black you'd expect His Darkness to), although that's not a perfect comparison just due to the different nature of both games lore.

That's not to say we're only dealing with VII allusions though, I'd say there are plenty of VIII and IV peppered in there. Actually the entire Ancients/Zodiark plot seems reminiscent of IV IMO. The Ascians are Zemus, the Ancients who summoned Hydaelyn are Fusoya, and while the majority of the Ancients aren't slumbering away on the Moon, Zodiark is sealed away in/as the Moon, and his explicit purpose at this point is to screw over the current population of the planet in order to revive the 75% of the sacrificed Ancients population, so you could say those 75% are sleeping, and I'm fairly sure Hades even refers to them as slumbering... Heck, his whole design and fight is somewhat reminiscent of Zemus/Zeromus' design...
I thought the Ascian's plan was closer to FFIX. Dead race tries to save itself at the cost of the world that came after. There's also the hypothesis that Hades was supposed to be FFIX's last boss instead of Necron.

Anyways, FF is very self-derivative at this point, and has been for years. To both its credit and detriment, Final Fantasy has a consistent set of themes and story-beats, and that was manifesting even before they began to self-reference out the wazoo (FFIX did it a fair bit as the "throwback" game, but it grew to be downright cynical imo by the time XIII rolled out).