Best Motivation?

[Tiamat3710]

Best motivation? I'm going with Elpizo and a few others on this one and say its Xande, Kuja, and Vayne. All three had rather sympathetic motives, Vayne especially could be considered an anti-hero rather than a villain.

Sure some of the other villains have more "fun" motives but "fun" and "good" are two different things. Kefka and Ex-Death are more symbolic as villains rather than having good motives but it explains why these two are definetly the most evil of the batch.

Worst motive goes to Seymour since the game never really nailed down what it was since it seemed like it changed every time you met him.

You would understand Seymours motivation if you got the aeon Anima you see his mother was the fayth for Anima and she explains this.

DUN DUN DUNN

Anyway seymours mother left him at a young age to become the fayth and he was sad and blah blah blah so his mother comforted him by becomiong his aeon. He enjoyed this incredible power but soon lusted for more and Anima just wasnt good enough for himso he went on a quest to get power at any cost and that is what made him a villian.

Not the best motivation but yeah.

[Wolf Kanno]

Best motivation? I'm going with Elpizo and a few others on this one and say its Xande, Kuja, and Vayne. All three had rather sympathetic motives, Vayne especially could be considered an anti-hero rather than a villain.

Sure some of the other villains have more "fun" motives but "fun" and "good" are two different things. Kefka and Ex-Death are more symbolic as villains rather than having good motives but it explains why these two are definetly the most evil of the batch.

Worst motive goes to Seymour since the game never really nailed down what it was since it seemed like it changed every time you met him.

You would understand Seymours motivation if you got the aeon Anima you see his mother was the fayth for Anima and she explains this.

DUN DUN DUNN

Anyway seymours mother left him at a young age to become the fayth and he was sad and blah blah blah so his mother comforted him by becomiong his aeon. He enjoyed this incredible power but soon lusted for more and Anima just wasnt good enough for himso he went on a quest to get power at any cost and that is what made him a villian.

Not the best motivation but yeah.

I did get Anima and know about his past...

When you first meet him, he wants to marry Yuna so he can gain more political power, then you kill him and he still insists on marrying Yuna and kills countless people to get her, then he decides out of the blue (after he wipes out the Ronso) he wants to become the Final Aeon so he can merge with Sin and wipe out Spira and bring peace to it even though up until this point the game painted him as a power hungry politician...

Let's face it, he was written in at the last minute cause Square needed a chatty villain...

[Goldenboko]

I don't buy that Kanno.

Why would he want to marry Yuna? Not for political power, he mentioned being her "Zion". He didn't want political power, Sin was his objective all along. He wanted to become her Final Summon, destroy Sin, and then become it. If marrying Yuna would make that possible, then so be it.

[Wolf Kanno]

Yeah but he never bothered in the beginning to tell Yuna he was going with her after they married. Hell its never even stated when he learned the truth about Yevon or Sin either so we don't even know if he knew the truth about the Final Aeon becoming Sin until it was revealed to the party after the marriage break-up. There is never any clear answers and most of his motive seems to involve just "assuming" he planned it all along. His motive seemed to always changed the more you learned the truth behind Yevon and Sin rather than have it carefully hinted.

I mean he doesn't even bother talking about doing the pilgrimage and becoming the Final Aeon until after its revealed to the party the final aeon becomes Sin. I just felt there would have been stronger hints if it was his motive to begin with. He doesn't even start the whole "it would be better if everyone was just unsent" until after he became unsent himself. I just feel he was poorly written (like everything in X :rolleyes2) and his motive was never properly clarified like other villains in the series. Only Ultemacia from VIII has an even worse clarification of motivation than Seymour did.

[Goldenboko]

Why would the main villain blab his plan? 'Oh hey Yuna when we get there, um one of is gonna have to turn into an Aeon. Um, I totally do that.' That wouldn't seem a little bit weird? Wouldn't it be weird if Seymour started to go on about unsent, BEFORE HE KNEW THAT YUNA KNEW HE WAS EVIL? He was trying to manipulate his way into power, you don't do that by going on long rants. If you look back all of his actions would lead to Yuna getting a Final Aeon, its not tough to imagine that he had this plan for a while. In fact there's a line where he directly states, "No the pilgrimage would continue."

[NeoCracker]

I somewhat agree with Boko here. I do think crazy dead man had a good motive, and it was obvious he was after something more then political gain with Yuna.

However, I agree with Kanno for the fact he was put in simply to give you a villian and cause Conflict, as Sin himself wasn't a Villian who could interfere with you regularly.

I mean if you were to take him out of the game entirely, the overall story itself would remain basically unchanged. Sin needs destroyed, and at Yunalesca I don't see any character having any sort of change without dead man being involved.

Don't get me wrong, in a game an Antagonist that isn't really the cause of the main problem can be good, but in the case of Seymore it just doesn't fly. I'd go inot a good Villain like that, but I'd be spoiling a game for someone. Hell, mentioning the game right now would spoil it now.

[Goldenboko]

Well this thread is specifically about motive, so thats specifically what I'm debating about.

[NeoCracker]

Ah, right, just the Motive.

Well, in that case he had a pretty good motive.

Not great by any means, but it wasn't bad either. In that respect, Seymore gets a passing score.

[Wolf Kanno]

Its not that I wanted him to start monologuing or anything Boko, I just felt his motives changed a step or two behind the main plot so it appears its more erratic and not consistent. At the end of my last post I stated that my main problem was that his motive was not clarified to the party consistently or well at all. Like Ultemacia, it created a bit of confusion and when it come down to it; his motive basically is "kill everyone cause I'm bat crazy!" which is similar to several villains that came before. To be honest, the last minute attempt at giving him sympathy with the whole deal with Anima (completely optional as well) just makes me hate him even more from a writing stand point.

I just feel the way he's written he feels "tacked on" and the fact (as NeoCracker pointed out) that his role is irrelevant to the overall story makes him a lousy villain. I guess my issue is that you never get any insight to his thinking until the very end and his actions and dialogue proceeding them contradict the idea that becoming the Final Aeon was really his goal to begin with.

Personally, I assumed he ditched political power once he died and learned most of Yevon's Maester's were like him, negating any need to continue since its useless. But that was my interpretation and the dialogue never gave me any hint that it might have been his plan to begin with. Had he been more fatalistic about Sin and Spira I could be swayed but he's just too power hungry for me to believe it. Besides, it doesn't matter if he's married to her or not, if he wanted to become the Final Aeon, so why bother with going through with the whole marriage ceremony to begin with? It was irrelevant to a goal concerning becoming the Final Aeon, but not if its purpose was about increasing his political influence.

[Marky Tee]

Kuja has the best motive at the end of the game
he knows he is gonna die so is not only taking out everyone but everything that exists
awesome