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Originally Posted by
Loony BoB
On the contrary, while a number of people didn't like the plot (mostly the ending, it should be noted, rather than the entire plot) and certainly many criticised the lack of things to do in the game, the lack of typical towns, the lack of interaction... the characters were arguably the most praised aspect of the game.
I'll take the "arguably" aspect of your quote and mention how there are several dedicated "why is this character a putz?" threads in the XIII forums that still have been getting activity lately for four out of the six cast members.
Hope alone has joined the ranks of Squall, Quina, and Cloud as Love/Hate with both sides of the debate being very passionate about how they feel about him and those debates have been going on since before the game even came out. The one thing some people have agreed is that even though the character development is good, the pacing leading up to it was terrible and the focus on the characters is mostly dropped after Chapter 9 in favor of the games cringe worthy plot.
Even in reviews, I've seen the plot and cast have been heavily criticized half of the time by the reviewers. So I would not agree that the cast is common ground for agreement and consensus.
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Pacing is something that was both good and bad for me in the game. It was good in how they paced the story but it would have been better if there were other things to do besides story/battle. But the way the story moved forward for me was pretty damned good. Although I suppose you could say the pacing of the supposed "tutorial" was pretty horrific. :p
I generally hated the games pacing, despite starting off with some action, I felt the first three Chapters dragged on and took forever to get to the bloody point. This was made more excruciating cause if you've read a short synopsis of the game, the first three chapters can be easily summarized in two paragraphs but instead expanded to several hours of mind numbing time wasters trying to masquerade as character development.
Chapter 4-6 is good for set up but once again I felt the chapters are far too long and the story and events too simple to be stretched out as long as they were. These were also the chapters that made me start to hate Vanille, Lightning, and Hope. 7 and 8 are probably the best chapters in the game but at the same time, that's not saying much cause the previous six chapters I felt were not so great and half of the content was unnecessary for both plot and character development, just characters rambling on about the same stuff from a previous chapter like a damn broken record. The plot begins and dies in Chapter 9 with a terrible plot twist and then the rest of the games story was mostly a waste of time that added nothing for the characters, world, or story.
I'm not even going into the games terrible gameplay pacing which was frankly much worse than the story aspect.
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XIII's characters were no more cliché than any of the previous FF's. The only reason they might feel cliché on some level is if someone were to point out that "but we've already seen this before". But the same could be said for characters in every recent FF. That's because of course you've seen them before. Every character can be boxed up into a personality type these days. Tough male, tough female, wussy male, wussy female, intellectual male, intellectual female, etc. So long as there are personalities, they will to some extent be considered cliché by someone who has played a large number of games because by that point you've seen so many characters that it's easy to pigeon-hole them.
However, I actually thought XIII's characters broke the mold pretty well. They added far more male characteristics to both Lightning and Fang than they did to any of the males. The characters developed very well, and for the most part were multi-layered, which for me made them, well, much more believable I suppose. They seemed to react to their situation far more realistically than any group of characters had before.
I agree that 99% of all game characters are cliche and because of that its easy to pigeon hole them, but what I would like to point out is that there is a difference between cliche and archetype when I use the words. Archetypes are the mold that all game characters borrow from, the "tough guy, wussy guy" as you put it. They are stock traits created to give a sense of familiarity but the most important thing about them is they are starting points for an author to use and expand upon so he can make the archetypes into more individual beings. The point being that they are suppose to grow beyond the archetype.
A cliche, in the sense of how I use the word to describe characters. word nazi tangent, feel free to skip(Before the language nazi's drop in and give me the correct Webster definition of Cliche I know what is actually means but its a nice easy word with a good dose of negativity imbued into that its easier to change the meaning of the word rather than to look up a more colorful and accurate word to describe, so smurf you and your Dictionary, I don't give a smurf and this is how language changes in human history so get off you high horse and shut the smurf up) is a character that never moves beyond that archetype and can be interchangeable with anyone who follows said archetype. They lack good development and never become anything more than started. I don't mind archetypes, I can't really stand cliches, because they make the story very predictable and they simply regurgitate what you've already known and experienced.
Vanille starts the game as the kooky girl with a dark secret just like Yuffie and Rikku and she ends the game like that. She never stops in the story and realizes that maybe acting like ditz is not appropriate and thus changes to show maturity, she basically acts like a nutjob, (SPOILER)reveals she caused all the problems for the rest of the party, cries a few times and then goes back to being a kooky nutjob. Its hard not feel like her "growth" is shallow at best. Especially since you could swipe her with Yuffie and Rikku and get the same result. The situations are different but the character never diverts.
Lightning is Squall with a vagina, dealing with a similar problem and sadly the extent of her growth is similar in that it involved a very awkward 180 degree turn that sorta steals the characters mojo afterwards. Lightning's revelation that she's been an angry bitch and a bad mentor to Hope, not only comes out of nowhere for her character but her motherly nature afterwards is uneasy and downright creepy. Much like Squall's rather awkward lovey-dovey feelings towards Rinoa in VIII. The only good that came of her growth afterwards is that she was nicer to Snow but looking at the anti-Snow threads I would say some fans feel that would be a negative thing. There is change but I kind feel like there really isn't much to Lightning. She shuts herself off and becomes the soldier type shutting out her sister and then later realizes she's been a bitch
I don't feel Fang really has any character growth, she's basically Paine out of her goth stage and smiles more but unlike Paine, Fang doesn't really change. she's overprotective of Vanille and she hates the l'Cie and that never really changes through the whole story, sure she says she hates Cocoon and puts up a front but I feel its way too obvious that she's putting on a front and the game proved me right. Even seeing her village a wasteland doesn't garner a real emotional response from her and her one major moment in the ending felt more like a desperate ploy to garner sympathy from the player than as a real test of character development.
Hope... well I've made my rants on Hope but I would like to point out that despite him being a rip off of another character, that's not what bothers me about him. Its the fact he's a crappy rip-off of another character that bugs me. He's overly whiny and emotional til chapter 5 and then becomes poster child of optimism. He's got the most extreme emotional changes out of the whole cast which just feels far fetched. Its like the kids being pumped up with uppers and downers between chapters and I haven't seen such a grossly improportioned display of angst since the Real World on MTV. Yes, he has the most extreme circumstances but I don't feel his reaction was accurate to his circumstances. Maybe its just 5 wasted years on a Psychology degree that went no where but I felt half the time he was being too emotional and the other half of the time he wasn't being emotional enough.
I feel only Sahz is the most realistic character but sadly he's mostly background comic relief outside of the two chapter about him. Which is a shame but to be fair the whole cast gets the shaft after Chapter 9 as their personal feelings and struggles are no longer important to the games story. Most of the character development is dropped except for a few terrible and irrelevant ones for Vanille and Fang.
In regards to most of the cast, I felt the Datalog told their story better than they conveyed in the cutscenes and often I would ask myself after reading the Datalog summary for a chapter if it was for the same game, as I felt many of the greater emotional growth the characters reportedly had according to the Datalogs was annoyingly absent and poorly shown in the scenes. The fact the Datalog gave the player information the cutscenes didn't feel were important enough to talk about was a terrible oversight by the author.
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However, I actually thought XIII's characters broke the mold pretty well. They added far more male characteristics to both Lightning and Fang than they did to any of the males. The characters developed very well, and for the most part were multi-layered, which for me made them, well, much more believable I suppose. They seemed to react to their situation far more realistically than any group of characters had before.
I would disagree as stated above. ;)
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Your criticisms don't seem to be on par with most of the more universal criticisms I noted during the XIII backlash. Perhaps this is due to the sheer number of games you've played making you see things differently to most people - particularly with things that are to do with characters and story. When you "read" video game stories over, more often than not they are the same as something that's been done before. So it's only the first time you play one of those types of stories that they are interesting. Sadly, making completely new storylines with no similarities to previous stories in hundreds of RPGs is something that is very difficult to do, likewise for characters. I think XIII did a decent enough job.
As I stated above, I don't feel the story/character situation is not as positive as you think it is.
As for your other point, to get back to my point about archetypes and cliches. I don't mind archetypes, I don't mind stock characters, as long as a I see meaningful and satisfactory growth. Fang and Vanille are cliches but I would agree that Hope, Snow, and Lightning had growth and grew slightly out of their archetpyes but for them I felt it was poor development cause they don't stray too far and I never felt it was satisfactory. Lightning does some badass stunts but I never felt she grew to be a likable character, the same goes for Snow. Hope is sort of an oddity, he's a much more likable character by then end of the game but that's because anything was better than his mopey and whiny attitude in the beginning so anything was going to be an improvement so while obnoxious to less obnoxious is good growth it still doesn't jump the hurtle of making him a a likable and relate able character.
Yet I would point to Persona 3 as a title that borrows heavily from the cliches and archetypes seen in high school themed anime shows and despite every character falling into a very predictable and overused archetype, in the course of the game, they all grow and become something close to human by the end, they all have meaningful growth, and if The Answer was proof of anything its that the events of P3 had a profound effect on their lives. Something I don't feel I can say the same of XIII's cast.
I also felt P3 handled the revelation of impending death and inescapable fate more realistically than XIII's cast. The game structure itself allowed for the player to feel it as well, once again, XIII tried to tackle something that's been done before but where I feel it really fails is not in its lack of novelty but its lack of creating its own spin on the subject and being overshadowed by Persona 3, RG Veda, and X/1999. Its the stories inability execute its point well that is the main problem. I never really felt so bad for their situation nor could I feel the conflict with their Focus. Their personal stories have their moments but I often felt the growth wasn't on par with the fantastic situation they found themselves in. I was expecting some more soul searching and evaluation and less blind optimism.
