I don't necessarily see that as a regression. You've gotta throw in all the other factors in to her want to sacrifice herself in X. It wasn't because she was mature, it was because her father did it and everyone expected her to do it. It was so ingrained in her as it was the whole religion that she didn't really have a choice in the matter.

To her not wanting to sacrifice anyone, she wasn't told Tidus would stop existing without the Fayth and in the end lost him. If you have a big loss like that, I'm sure you'd exhaust all other options before losing another person. It's understandable why she's stingy. Add to it that summoners sacrificing themselves to sin in the past did not solve the problem, it goes along with the same theme.

I agree X-2 has a lot of problems, I cant stand watching most of the cutscenes as it's just to heavy with the girl power stuff, but I wouldnt say she's regressed. She's came out of her shell for certain and as a character she grew from being that reverent girl being bred to kill herself for everyone, finally she's living partly for herself.

Also, on Culture.

Their entire religion was proven to be not just false, but actively lying to them and murdering the fuck out of them by way of giant doom whale, not to mention ruled by the undead. Further, the people had been shown to drown their sorrows in ridiculous and silly pass times while Sin was around. It is anything but a large leap to assume that their society would cope with finding out that they'd all been basically living lies for generations by trying as hard as they can to ignore it and drown their sorrows in false happiness ala MTV Diva shit.

Though I totally agree with what you've said about the ending scene, Snake. I never assumed that meant he was alive. I thought it was metaphorical or something, because him being alive at that point made less than 0 sense.

Any character who suddenly decides that the life of a single individual, any individual, supersedes the continued existence of the world, including that aforementioned individual, has clearly regressed.

Whether Yuna's initial justifications for being willing to sacrifice herself for the sake of Spira were justified by personal maturity or simply following her father's example or whatever, doesn't change the fact that philosophically it's the right decision to make 100% of the time. For Yuna to choose any alternative would be selfish. She'd have to value her own self-preservation over the lives of thousands of others.

Of course what's really strange is that the situation with the ancient Doomsday device -- whatever the hell it was -- in FFX-2 is arguably far worse than Sin. Sin was a continued nuisance that wrecked lives every decade or so, but it never came close to destroying the entire planet or wiping out all of humanity. In fact, Spira's residents largely accepted Sin as a continued destructive force. Yuna's sacrifice in FFX would have only bought Spira another decade or so of peace before Sin presumably resurfaced. By contrast, in FFX-2, ancient Zanarkand Doomsday Machine or whatever is going to fuck all of Spira up. Sin's effects are predictable; Doomsday Machine was an unknown monstrosity buried under the Calm Lands or something, if I remember correctly.

The bottom line is this: In such a situation, it's a simple sign of fucking caring about the continued existence of the human race to allow individuals to sacrifice themselves to stop the threat. If you don't, you risk everybody dying -- including the people you're so worried about in the first place! Yuna's decision was thus arbitrary and her speech about refusing to sacrifice anyone made no sense. She was willing to sacrifice everyone in order to, uhh, preserve the mere insubstantial chance of sacrificing no one? Yeah, that's not character maturation or progression, that's sheer character stupidity.

EDIT: Regarding culture: I just don't think that progression happens in two years. I don't care if all the evidence in the world is immediately released that exposes Yevon for a pile of shit. In a mere two year span, there will still be plenty of Yevon defenders, out of sheer stubbornness or petty denial. In two years, the kinds of infrastructure upgrades wouldn't be possible to support a Diva-MTV resurgence. The entertainment industry, virtually defunct besides Blitzball during the FFX era, isn't suddenly going to develop like that.

The real problem with FFX-2 though isn't that all these changes have necessarily happened in such a short span of time, but rather, that the game merrily assumes you're going to go along with all the bullshit and never really seems to provide any semblance of justification for anything. Even if Yuna had a few serious scenes where the shifting beliefs and demographics in Spira were fully explored -- in a way that didn't seem ludicrous or played for laughs -- that could have worked. Final Fantasy X-2 does not attempt to provide justification because the game doesn't take itself seriously, which works fine if the game had no correlation to FFX. But as a sequel to FFX, FFX-2 had an obligation of sorts to actually explain its correlation to FFX. The complete shift in tone is jarring -- and it should've taken at least a decade for the political, theological, and bureaucratic underpinnings of society to erode in such a fashion.

Snake: Sacrificing people in the past never worked. Upon learning this it would be completely ridiculous for her to assume that it's going to start working now. If anything that was a pretty large sub-point of FFX. That merely choosing to allow someone to sacrifice themselves so that everyone else can keep on doing what they're doing isn't morally/ethically right, and that it doesn't actually fix the problems.

You can disagree with it, but it's there.

This is also why Tidus's sacrifice was potent. He didn't sacrifice himself BY himself. He was merely a casualty of a war that the entirety of Spira was involved in as opposed to a sacrificial offering. Yes, he knew he would probably cease to exist upon their victory, but fighting your hardest knowing there is a damn good, or even 100% chance of dying, is not at all the same as being a sacrificial offering.

The route he took was, indeed, all about denying that anyone would need to be a sacrificial offering ever again.

For Yuna to choose to sacrifice her friends would have gone against the morals of FFX.

It's hard to say either way, since there are two ways of thinking. Most of the Japanese media I see value the life of the individual over more(though they still make those who sacrifice themselves into heroes...so I guess it's somewhat of a weird concept). Heck, it shows up in Western stuff a lot too. Maybe Im too used to it being a Japanese thing that what I do doesn't enter my mind when playing the game>.<

Probably the whole provability of undead Maesters. Also lots of people still followed Yevon, but now it was New Yevon, and ruled by a new guard that outright admitted what had been going down before and apparently let Yuna off the hook.

Not only that, but no one on spira actually gave to shit fucks about HOW Sin went down, just so long as they got themselves a Calm. See: Large scale support of Operation Mi'ihen. The ONLY character we saw whom out right opposed it was Wakka, and he only opposed it 'cause of misplaced anger over his dead brother.

It wouldn't matter at all if Sin came back in ten years. What would matter was that they now know they can kill Sin without sacrificing a summoner. It's possible. They can fight him.

X had Yevon guards with guns. Proof is the fight before the wedding.

Yeah, there is that. But I think someone would've started asking questions about how Yuna went in with 6 guardians and came out with 4.

Yes, but those were secret Yevon guards that nobody really knew about. Wakka nearly shat himself when he saw them. New Yevon is completely upfront about having guns and nobody cares.

If your point is "the morals of FFX and FFX-2 were equally screwed up," yeah, I could actually buy that. The difference is that FFX's story was actually told well enough that I forgave my philosophical disagreements with the characters. Whereas FFX-2 doesn't even really give a damn about explaining the philosophical positions of the characters because everyone's too busy yukking it up in a series of comedic cheesepuff scenes that border on the incredulous. FFX-2's poor storytelling everywhere else undermine it when it actually attempts to become serious at the end because I'm still having nightmares about Yuna giving JPop performances and comparing breast sizes and giving a female rival a backrub.

It's like if I'm having a political debate against Barack Obama and Michael Moore. Obama and Moore may take the same exact position on an issue -- for the sake of hypothetical argument, let's go with Affirmative Action, because I probably would disagree with them both on that issue.

I may vehemently disagree with their positions on that issue. But I bet you Obama is going to present a case methodically in such a way that I find credible. I may disagree with his position, and I may find his arguments unpersuasive, but because he backs it up with evidence and generally treats his arguments seriously and with a proper amount of research and respect I can't dislike him for making his case. In fact, I may ultimately emphasize enough to understand why he believes Affirmative Action is necessary and vital. I could understand his perspective and how his life experiences and his interpretation of facts leads him to a particular set of beliefs, while simultaneously disagreeing.

And then there's Michael Moore, who'd just spew out random bullcrap in the least effective, least credible way imaginable. (This may be an exaggeration against Moore, who probably isn't always as bombastic as his critics paint him, but I'm relying on the stereotype for the sake of the point.)

Okay that's a bad analogy but it's 1:30 in the morning. My point is, FFX is sort of like Obama in that hypothetical and FFX-2 is sort of like Michael Moore.