Cliches, Tropes and whatnot!

[Fynn]

Let's try and list the themes that keep appearing in Final Fantasy games! Say which ones you love, which ones you wish died and what new cliches would you put in the series!

I'll start with a simple one - the rule of three. Ever notice that in every FF since Final Fantasy IV, regardless of the total amount of party members, there is always three female cast members? Be it VI with it's 14 characters, 11 of which are male, or X-2, where you only have three party members, so guess what - they're ALL female! Their character types are similar in every entry as well - see the three faces of Eve (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheThreeFacesOfEve) article on TVTropes.

Though personally I always loved the (non-)humanoid animal characters. Umaro, Mog, Red XIII, and pretty much the entire cast of IX are awesome :cool:

Thoughts?

[Del Murder]

Wow, that rule of 3 is weird! I never thought about it before. Though FFXIII-2 has become an exception (but you only have 2 party members total in that one).

One cliche I've gotten sick of is making all the main characters orphans. I want to see a main character with a family (who is not dead) for once. I really liked in DQV that you can get married and have kids and they all become a part of your party. I'd never seen that done before.

[Alpha2099]

Ever seen the Grand List of RPG Cliches?

Not that they all apply to Final Fantasy, though most certainly do, but if you want cliches and the like, this is something worth reading.

The Grand List of Console Role Playing Game Cliches (http://project-apollo.net/text/rpg.html)

[Chris]

One cliche I've gotten sick of is making all the main characters orphans. I want to see a main character with a family (who is not dead) for once. I really liked in DQV that you can get married and have kids and they all become a part of your party. I'd never seen that done before.
I absolutely agree with this. I don't know why they keep doing this. As If having a family would make any character any less interesting somehow. Quite the contrary, if you ask me.

[Mercen-X]

I once read through the entire list of RPG cliches and tried to compile a story that contradicted every single one. For example, there's a cliche where the hero's parents wake them up from sleeping in... so I decided the hero would wake up on his own early in the morning and sneak out.

Then I started lounging around the Television Tropes and Idioms website and started picking and choosing which cliches I wanted to appear in my game... since having at least 50 is unavoidable in any case... there are even tropes that exist to contradict other tropes so there's literally no escape... everything's been done.

What were we talking about?

[Wolf Kanno]

Genki Girls (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GenkiGirl) need to die, not to mention just the cast having unrealistic ages to bein with. We need a cast that can have cutscenes in Bars again.

[VeloZer0]

We need a cast that can have cutscenes in Bars again.
This is a good quote.

[TrollHunter]

Oh nonononono, don't remind me of TVTropes during my break, I'm trying to write an essay....
Too late D:

[Fynn]

Genki Girls (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GenkiGirl) need to die, not to mention just the cast having unrealistic ages to bein with. We need a cast that can have cutscenes in Bars again.

But some games can really pull off the Genki Girl. I always considered Katt from BoFII a sort of Genki Girl, and yet you gotta admit, she's pretty endearing.

What I hate the most, is that every major male antagonist since VII has to be this hot bishounen. Why?! Just look at them!

http://media.gamemories.com/images/91877ac-sephiroth-1.jpg
http://ff.munkyisland.com/images/ff9/kuja2.jpg
http://finalfantasy.neoseeker.com/w/i/finalfantasy/thumb/1/1d/Seymour.jpg/240px-Seymour.jpg
http://www.ffcompendium.com/chara/12vayne2.jpg

Well, you could say Kefka from FFVI counts as well, but I guess more people like him for his batshit insane qualities. Unless there are some messed up fangirls I don't know of who would hit that.
http://gameaxis.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/kefka.jpg

Oh yeah, and then there's II with its own David Bowie.
http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/1/13328/456463-emperor_large.png

I'm just saying I kind of miss the likes of Exdeath and Garland :cry:

[Mercen-X]

Yeah, it does seem that the most popular primary villains are either masked knights or beautious manipulators. Whatever happened to the stories where our enemies were creepy disgusting aliens or, in the opposite direction, creepily uncanny intelligent children? :|
I'm not sure what I'm looking for here.