Better Dead or Alive

[Vyk]

Hm... admittedly, I didn't think they were that young. Though I never looked them up. I just took them at the ages they acted like. Something like 10 years old. Damn JRPGs misrepresenting childhood maturity levels. Though I don't think extra death really detracts from any one character's death. It may be a little redundant, but I still find it more profound. Especially with kids involved, as that is indeed extremely rare (and on that note it doesn't really surprise me that they would all come back at the end considering Nintendo's censorship on touchy subjects at the time)

To me its like if a whole town had to sacrifice to ensure Cecil could succeed. That'd be a terrible and powerful tragedy. Even more so if someone's girlfriend were in that town. The girlfriend dying would have a massive impact. The town dying would have a massive weight. I wouldn't feel that they'd cancel each other out. But maybe I have a darker literary palette

[VeloZer0]

I just gloss over JRPG child ages as they are so ridiculously out of line. In my experience if you can get a 5 year old to walk in a straight line you are doing great. Something 10-12 would have been much better.

Interesting point about the small significant deaths vs large scale death. We could always be reflecting about the thousands and thousands of nameless casualties incurred over the course of the game

[Vyk]

I just gloss over JRPG child ages as they are so ridiculously out of line. In my experience if you can get a 5 year old to walk in a straight line you are doing great. Something 10-12 would have been much better.

Interesting point about the small significant deaths vs large scale death. We could always be reflecting about the thousands and thousands of nameless casualties incurred over the course of the game

There's been a lot of jokes made about how Cloud is basically a disgruntled postal worker taking out all his ex-colleagues while bombing Shin-Ra reactors. When its monsters you're killing, we just shrug it off. But a definite case can be made on the ethics of killing random human enemies

And on that subject I did really appreciate the dramatic emphasis on the fight with .... someone's parents. Dear lord I can't remember who's parents you fight in this game. But they were effectively begging you to kill them while they were mutating into monsters or something

(Obviously its been a long time since I've actually played this game...)

[Wolf Kanno]

They were Edge's parents.

[VeloZer0]

WK when I saw you posted in this I was excited to read some long ass thesis

When its monsters you're killing, we just shrug it off. But a definite case can be made on the ethics of killing random human enemies

I would be nice if the games could focus a little more one the mass devastation the events of the game cause than the emo goings on of the individual cast members, but from the looks of it SE wants to go in the completely other direction

[Wolf Kanno]

Sorry to disappoint you but I'll see if I have time in the next few days to write a small novel on the topic.

I feel part of the issue is that its just hard write a convincing story and more people are interested in personal drama, blame reality TV for changing taste in writing. I don't mind character driven stories, I just wish the characters weren't so badly written half the time.

[Elskidor]

Shoulda stayed dead. It's really one of the only thing that hurts this game. For me a wonderful tragic tale can't keep it's magic when you scratch out the tragedies at the end. I find it better to pretend they died and create my own fairy tale ending.