In 2001, Final Fantasy X was released. It was the acclaimed series first foray onto the PlayStation 2, featuring the franchise’s first fully voiced entry. While the game’s accomplishments are many, and most of them hold up even today, few of them continue to shine as brightly as the game’s central protagonist, Yuna. Even two-and-a-half decades later, Yuna stands out for both the quality of her character and the unique blend of traits that make her the best character the games medium has ever produced.
At the core of Yuna’s greatness is her strength. Or rather, the way she is allowed to project that strength. Generally, strength is shown through physical endurance in a grand adventure like Final Fantasy X‘s. The ability to weather elemental hardships and the wrath of foes is used to build up a hero’s strength and resolve. But with her assortment of both magical and martial protectors around her, Yuna is rarely required to personally weather the greatest of immediate dangers.
Yuna doesn’t need protection; her friends offer it because they care about her and want to lighten her burden.
This protective cocoon that the story weaves around her could’ve easily been used to reduce Yuna into a classic “damsel” style character—one who must be protected at all costs. However, Square Soft had the good sense not to reduce its leading lady to such a tired cliche. She would not be a prop in her own story. Rather than needing protection, it is made abundantly clear that her Guardians wished to protect her. They did not want her to have to deal with such trivial dangers. Her’s was already an immeasurable burden to bear—no need to add to it.
The strength that those around her value so highly is revealed to the player through Tidus’s eyes over the course of the game. Her empathy for all those in Spira and the ceaseless determination to defeat Sin that it births within her play out over and over again. But not through the usual violent means gaming frequently uses to showcase its heroes, but through far more measured and quiet ways. Ways that, while less forceful in appearance, can be every bit as impactful.
Opening with the Sending at the Kilik dock and growing through her willingness to marry Seymour Guado, Yuna’s perseverance and choice to put the people of Spira ahead of her own comfort become more evident with each leg of her journey. This gradual revelation eventually culminates in the reveal that, to acquire the Final Aeon and possibly defeat Sin, Yuna will have to die. And this isn’t a “may,” this is a “will.”
“I want my journey to be full of laughter.”
Willingly dedicating your life to a suicide mission would be impressive enough, but that isn’t even the end of what makes Yuna’s strength so incredible. There is another element to her journey. One that lifts her even higher. The part of her that makes everyone not just admire her, but love her. A special piece of the character that can be summed up in my favorite line of hers: “I want my journey to be full of laughter.”
Despite knowing the end she marches to, Yuna never allows her chosen fate to weigh her down. She insists on seeing the beauty of her world, despite the crumbling and besieged state it has been forced to languish in. She doesn’t want others to look at her with only sorrow, but with smiles. She is not being forced to make the supreme sacrifice; she is choosing it for them.
Layering on another level of incredible character development for Yuna is her response to the game’s final grand reveal. Yu Yevon, the religion her father gave his life for, and the quest she has devoted herself to, is all a lie. The Final Aeon cannot defeat Sin. According to Yunalesca, Sin cannot be defeated, only driven off for a time, giving the people of Spira a temporary reprieve from their sorrow.
Finding herself beyond Yu Yevon remains Yuna’s most meaningful moment over the decades.
To learn that so much sacrifice, effort, and hope had been poured into a lie would be enough to break most people. It should lead one to despair, and perhaps even agree to perform the final ritual, simply to escape from the inevitable defeat that has just been laid out before you. But while the religion of Yu Yevon shaped Yuna’s path, it was not what her life was about. Her life was for Spira. And if Yu Yevon couldn’t offer her an answer, then she would make her own.
While so many elements of Yuna feel deep and meaningful, this moment here is the one that has only grown in relevance over the decades. As many in our own world become more and more willing to swear blind obedience to institutions to free themselves from the burdens of responsibility, effort, and hope, Yuna’s pivot to search for a way outside of the box built around her is a powerful show of independent thought. She refuses to accept what others have determined to be inevitable, forging her own path to victory.
As the story draws to its close, Yuna once again shines with a special light. As Sin vanishes, so too does Tidus. Having fallen in love with the clueless young man, Yuna is faced with one last sacrifice. The final moments shared between the two characters are heartbreaking and inspirational. Yuna’s pain is evident as she shares her feelings and sees her love walk off to enter the Farplane, but her strength is also on full display as well.
Yuna has a mix of strength, compassion, resolve, flexibility, and hope that an entire medium has failed to surpass.
Rather than fall apart, denying the inevitable, she gets to share a bittersweet moment, wrapped in the now incorporeal arms of Tidus. But even though there will always be pain for her in that moment, she will never forget it and always hold it close to her heart, as is indicated in her closing speech to the now free people of Spira.
While Final Fantasy X is littered with numerous other small moments that endear and uplift Yuna’s incredible character, these are the ones that form the vast majority of what makes her so singular as a character. The special mix of strength, compassion, resolve, flexibility, and hope that she willingly bears for the sake of all those around her creates a special and unique character that an entire medium has failed to surpass.
Final Fantasy X/X2 HD Remaster is available on PC and all major consoles.