The whole concept of Fal'Cie makes no sense [Full game spoilers]

[Loony BoB]

It is suggested that the one called Lindzei may in fact be Barthandelus in the official guide, although that is only written as a passing theory rather than solid information.

The Analects are well worth reading, though, totally.

EDIT: Oh, and espritduo, it may say they are "of the line of Lindzei" or whatever, but it also notes that...

As our fal'Cie are the children of Hallowed Pulse, so are the fal'Cie who lurk within Cocoon the brood of Lindzei.

Basically, all fal'Cie are the children of Pulse, the god who created, er, Pulse.

[espritduo]

I'm not sure what you mean, but that quote is actually saying, in a rather grammatically awkward way, that the Cocoon fal'Cie are NOT of Pulse origin, but from Lindzei.

If you fix the sentence so that it flows in a more down to earth way.....

As our fal'Cie are the children of Hallowed Pulse,

so the fal'Cie who lurk within Cocoon (are) the brood of Lindzei.

The awkward placement of the second "are" can make it look at first glance like it's saying the Cocoon fal'Cie are the same as the pulse ones, but looking at the end of the sentence you can see that the "are" is actually referring to "Lindzei's brood". You can look at it like this: AS this is the case, SO that is the case. For example, "as piglets are the children of pigs, so are lambs the children of sheep."

Man, I feel like I'm taking the SAT's again....

[Loony BoB]

Ah, fair point then. It's very awkwardly written!

[Citizen Bleys]

Bad Dudes is full of drama and social commentary

It is. The President has been kidnapped by ninjas! Ninjas!

[Dignified Pauper]

I am just going to throw in here that this game wasn't so much a game about plot and story, as much as it was about character development. You really understood the character... But the story, outside of the character's interactions with one-another... They all sucked.

[Cloudane]

Bingo. I think you just hit the nail of what I consider to be the shining part of this game: the characters and their development. The story, in hindsight, was a bit of a mess (although it introduced nice memorable concepts like the pretty darn evil l'Cie slavery) and if you had it on fast/auto-battle it was almost leaning towards a hack-n-slash... but as a character piece with all the conflicts, resolutions and development I thought it was up there with the best. Not quite to Cloud Strife levels of complexity, but that would take some meeting or beating anyway.

And the characters do have a HUGE impact on whether I like or dislike a game as a whole, often more than the game itself. (This also explains why I disliked XII so much, even though the gameplay was pretty cool and the story was.. reasonable).

I wouldn't say even this is perfect (Snow and Lightning were weak characters IMO) but I would say it's one of FF's far better offerings in that department.

If examples are required
(SPOILER)
Hope going through his grief, from intense anger to eventual acceptance - although there wasn't as much in between as there should've been, it was nice to watch. And at the same time going from quite a coward and a negative person to the one who would be pushing the party forward and raising their spirits (in fact I'd say Hope was one of my favourite characters. YMMV)

Sazh going through various levels of despair and running away, to the same kind of murderous anger (out of character but understandable in the circumstances) to a certain amount of acceptance and hope etc.

Vanille's lies and hidden truths, really a refreshing change to see what's underneath the irritating happy-go-lucky exterior that at least one female character always has

Fang always appearing very firm and confident in her standpoints, and yet switching that standpoint a couple of times in the game as the cracks in her certainty appear. There wasn't bucketloads of in-your-face development, as this character was done a lot more subtly than her demeanor but it's all there when you read between the lines. She's also plain cool.

Snow - okay, one of the weaker ones. One track "hero" mind. He did seem to mature a little as the game went on... call it subtle.

Lightning ironically was probably the least interesting character IMO and didn't change as much as I'd have liked (smile properly dammit!) but did basically screw her head on and stop being heartless - well the character's like an unfinished homage to Cloud or Squall I guess.

On the NPC side of course you have the obvious internal/loyalty conflicts of Rosch, Cid et al.