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Dissidia Final Fantasy is a sub-franchise of fighting games in the Final Fantasy series. It is a crossover containing characters and locations from other games in the series, and having them fight against one another in a battle between two gods, originally between Cosmos and Chaos, and later between Spiritus and Materia.

Titles[]

Dissidia Final Fantasy NTDissidia Final Fantasy Opera OmniaDissidia Final Fantasy NTDissidia 012 Final FantasyDissidia Final Fantasy (2008)
  • Dissidia Final Fantasy (2008): The first title. Released on the PlayStation Portable, Dissidia Final Fantasy featured duel battles between two of twenty characters from the series in a three-dimensional environment based on areas from the series. It features a campaign centered around the Warriors of Cosmos as they fight to defeat the Warriors of Chaos.
  • Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy: An expanded prequel to the original, also on PlayStation Portable, with similar but improved gameplay, as well as new characters introduced. It features eight new characters, a campaign serving as a prequel to the original, as well as the original campaign.
  • Dissidia Final Fantasy NT: A game developed by Team Ninja and released on arcades in Japan as Dissidia Final Fantasy, later ported to PlayStation 4 and released worldwide as Dissidia Final Fantasy NT. It features three-versus-three battles with a class system for characters, in which characters are either Vanguard, Assassin, Marksman or Specialist. Playable in offline play against AI or online multiplayer, it has additional characters added through updates. Its story is based around the gods Spiritus and Materia, though there is no campaign mode.
    • Dissidia Final Fantasy: Secretum -Himitsu-: A stageplay reading of a scene between several characters in Dissidia NT, it served as a tie-in to the game that foreshadowed the several new characters as possible future downloadable content.
  • Dissidia Final Fantasy Opera Omnia: A mobile game with a combat system more similar to a traditional JRPG, with a story based around an alternate conflict of the gods Spiritus and Materia.

Themes[]

True to its series's namesake, Dissidia focuses on the "heart of all conflict," and gathers the lead protagonists and antagonists throughout the mainline Final Fantasy series to emphasize the core themes that tie all of Final Fantasy together. In vein with the fighting game genre, players explore these themes individually while encouraged to play the rest of the cast to gain a full grasp of its world and story. The lead characters form different factions even within their alignment as various characters are destined to clash not only in battle, but in their motivations and perspectives.

The story of Dissidia is driven by a scenario of extreme conflict, a war between gods, and emphasizes Final Fantasy's themes of dualism as the clash is between a god of light and benevolence against a god of darkness and wickedness. In the initial game the conflict is simple, but later games expand and distort this alignment, showcasing what happened before the final war between Cosmos and Chaos. Dissidia NT goes onto further collusion as the goddess of science, Materia, and the god of magic, Spiritus, are the mixed remnants of both Cosmos and Chaos, and are forced to bring their warriors together in the face of an even greater threat.

The setting of a seemingly never ending divine war in a higher plane of existence draws inspiration from the religious and spiritual realms of the martial arts and draws a parallel to the Ashuras and Devas within Buddhist and Hindu cosmology, who infight as Ashuras hate and envy the comfortable yet indifferent Devas who live in a greater realm of bliss and godly responsibility. It is also believed within Buddhism that Ashuras are facsimiles for the mindset of those who live their lives as warriors and ambitious people, whose lives are destined for never ending conflict, while Devas represent the rich and the royalty who are free from worldly inconveniences, but all are also morally varied between being good or evil, and will at times come together to cooperate for various aims. While it is considered that the realm of men is the easiest form of reincarnation to achieve enlightenment, salvation is still considered for Ashuras and Devas who follow devotion to Dharma and virtues of good to use their power for the betterment of others.

Etymology[]

Dissidia is the plural form of discidium, alternatively spelled dissidium, meaning "discord, disagreement". It is related to the verb dissidere, "to disagree"; this and related terms have given rise to words in various languages with similarly intended meaning (e.g. English dissident, Italian dissidio, Portuguese dissidente).

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