More Final Fantasy characters need to die mid-game.

[McLovin']

[
^ This. I think I'm the only person that didn't really care when Aerith died. Nice girl and all but it really didn't matter much to me for some reason. My brother thinks it's one of the most dramatic death scenes of all time, but I never really saw it that way. I think there was one death in Chrono Cross that struck me as pretty sad and had some damn depressing music to go along with it, but I can't seem to remember who's death it was.

You might be talking about Miguel at the Dead Sea at that broken bell tower with the sunset.

[Wolf Kanno]

Actually, I think being in the High Definition age gives them even more opportunity to pull off said feelings and emotions at a higher level than they used to when they were working with more limited consoles. The problem is that they just need to understand how to execute properly. One big criticism to this that I hear often is that FF characters in a lot of games don't engage in enough small talk to develop actual personality for this to happen [little-to-no personality means little-to-no attachment, which means little-to-no reaction when cataclysmic events happen concerning said characters]. I'm a firm believer in that something as simple as that can make a huge impact. I actually think that Star Ocean 3 did a pretty good job with this, however it was killed by bad voice acting which irritated the hell out of me [and a lot of others from what I hear]. Voice acting that blows can ruin a good story with well-developed personalities. This could just be bias on my part, but voice acting really burns me up when I play a lot of these games because it's usually done so poorly. I'm no expert in this industry, but generally actors don't seem to have this issue when doing a live-action movie or TV series. However when it comes to animated or CG films/games/etc, the voice acting seems quite bland, predictable and lacking actual personality.

I do believe small talk is pretty important as well as just having the party actually reflect on the devastation such a thing creates.

I think the last death that really affected me was in Persona 3. One character bites the big one and the entire cast is just at a total loss. The game plays on a day to day schedule and I literally could not go to dungeons or interact with most of my party members because they were still shell shocked from watching a comrade die. It literally blew my mind and as I waited around for my party to overcome their grief, even I started to think back on this character's impact cause I did spend a few months (in-game) getting to know him and now he was gone. My usual cold hearted indifference actually disappeared for awhile. I was completely moved by one of the character's speech at the decease's funeral. Seriously, stuff like this needs to happen more.

I think what we should be doing with the new generation of hardware is expanding games and working more towards building relationships between the characters and player and I don't mean loads of dialogue either. Just using body language or making the character do something a little quirky when they do normal things (like adding a skip when they walk) just to throw the player off their game would suffice. Giving the player the option to get to know the character rather than force it down their throat.

>>> Square has a lot to learn about main characters deaths in their RPGs, FF deaths are a joke and not sad at all, if you think FF deaths are sad then go and play a Suikoden game..

I laughed more at Gremio's death... but the others are definetly better.

[Quindiana Jones]

I agree with Kanno eith regards to adding random things like a skip in their step. People are often quite weird. People are often quite witty. Throwing something "human" like that in for absolutely no reason other than to be human would probably leave me shocked for a minute the first time I see it.

[black orb]

>>> Square has a lot to learn about main characters deaths in their RPGs, FF deaths are a joke and not sad at all, if you think FF deaths are sad then go and play a Suikoden game..

I laughed more at Gremio's death... but the others are definetly better.

>>> Gremio`s death was the saddest, and you know it..

[RedPouch]

I think what we should be doing with the new generation of hardware is expanding games and working more towards building relationships between the characters and player and I don't mean loads of dialogue either. Just using body language or making the character do something a little quirky when they do normal things (like adding a skip when they walk) just to throw the player off their game would suffice. Giving the player the option to get to know the character rather than force it down their throat.

Body language definitely goes hand-in-hand with communication, even though it's such a small detail, it can really bring a character to life whereas in most anime or video games they might seem "stiff" or "flat". I see that more modern games are progressing with body language on their characters, which is good. I still think that it needs to get it to a higher level though. The hand gestures, the head jerks, the eyebrow movements, the arm and leg stances, all need the volume turned up. Having a person act out a live scene of such a conversation as a reference for creating it in 3D would probably improve the body language dramatically as well as the voice acting by heaps, since said person can actually "flesh out" that role a lot more naturally, making the voice acting sound a lot more natural as well and far less forced. I also agree that it doesn't have to include astounding heaps of dialogue either [wouldn't want to get too carried away, since it's a video game and not a TV show or something].

Your point about the reaction from the characters in Persona 3 is also quite valid. In a lot of video games, the characters' reactions to cataclysmic events usually seem pretty flat [there is some emotion displayed, but you never get the sense that it bothers them for more than a few minutes]. I haven't played Persona 3 myself, but from experience I know that you have good experience and excellent taste with this area, so I'm going to comfortably take your word for it. We need more of this!

Kanno, why don't we just team up and make our own video game.